Blake Gopnik
 

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I think that it's odious because it is made to fool people to make them believe that they are buying real paintings which they are not.

I would not trust any company that so obviously fiddle with the evidence.
I have never seen a copy of anything that would reflect the light exactly the same way as the original ! Look at the four examples of the girl in front of the field of red flowers and check out any point. It's the same photo used for the reference and "painting" -- it's phony !

They think they are smart, but I don't think so.
I don't know how they do, but I could come up with a lot of suggestions. These days you can print anything on a surface, with an Ink Laser printer, even upon a "brushstrokes" textured canvas and ad some luscious, genuine, handmade small brushstrokes ( that would not disturb anything ;) )
Sorry, almost forgot, a handwritten signature. :santa:

There'll always be someone who cares, one in a million, like it use to be.
How many percent settles usually with a handheld, shaken, flash photo of their loved ones anyway ?
Maybe they are smart after-all ?

We could pool some funds and put them to the test and world scrutiny here! Anyone have a good guinea pig photo.

These are nothing more than digitally manipulated photographs with texture added.

Alan,

I do not think many would. However many people are far more adept at taking pictures now, the cameras are so user friendly. We have relatives who take pictures of their loved ones and have calenders made. A good friend of ours takes beautiful Christmas card pictures of her children every year, everyone of them could be a painting and she is a medical secretary. People could have photographs that have been professionally taken, ie. weddings, proms, school pictures etc. and have them made into paintings for $250. They need not be amateur or bad photos at all. The site gives recommendations for the pictures.

Sharon,
good or bad photos are still photos and turning them into paintings, that look like photos, don't add anything.
Most of us knows that the force of a good painting is the footsteps of the dancing brush.
No photograph can ever mimic that or provide you with that sort of energy. A good painting is the result of a selection process, the artists will. Photos can be used for reference, but very, very rarely be used as is, in my opinion.
How can people, who don't know the slightest about painting, produce a usefully reference that can stand on its own ?

Hmmm......Actually the painting in the catalogue is quite lovely, and they do say that it is an oil by a hand selected master.

I WAS thinking of having a Summer Special, 20% off my already low prices. I would take the pictures, and have them painted by this company, and mark them up. Then I could take the summer off while they are being painted in China. I could add a few Knettell flourishes, whatever that is and make quite a good living very easily. If it went well I could extend the special.

Okay, Sharon, this devil's advocate tact is FREAKING me out! LOL.

Kinkade makes a good living from prints and he signs them personally.

Making prints of a photo on a canvas or something similar, like Allan so nicely explained, is quite simple. Adding a few brush strokes or a lot of brush strokes in specific places is what they do. I know of such paintings that hang in US embassies, as we speak.

I would consider and worry that the camera can do it better that is if I was making picture perfect copies but since we learn form life we know that the camera hasn't a chance. So, if one can refrain from picture perfect copies and learn from life, for only nature can be the true teacher, then be assured that no amount of tech can compare with what you as a true artist produce.

Here is a example. If you go to your local flower shop. Pick out a red rose and examine it. It looks picture perfect to the naked eye but the one that knows a nature grown rose can tell you at once whether this what you hold is a picture copy or the real thing. All the senses must be satisfied.

People that truly know their art will have no problem deciding what it is they are looking for. So, learn your craft well for as you can see the competition for picture perfect is nipping at ones heals. Then again one mite wish to make a fast $ and mite say who cares I got what I came for. How one thinks is evident by ones actions and words. As the saying goes a good try produces good fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit nether can a bad tree produce good fruit.

[QUOTE=Sharon Knettell

So many people are illiterate when it comes to the arts, especially painting. Generally a person, even an intelligent one, thinks they are giving you a compliment when they say, 'it looks just like a photograph'![/QUOTE]


These are like the reality TV shows. They exist because there will always be a market. (is this where I have to apologize to those who watch reality shows?)
( at $245 per portrait, I wonder how much the artist gets...)

This sounds like one of those ubiquitous Chinese-painted portrait websites that are cropping up all over the internet. There's also a sign at one of our local frame shops advertising this sort of thing, too.

It's my understanding that they're really paintings and really are hand done on canvas. The images are emailed to China and are painted by any one of a bunch of artists sitting in a long row in an assembly-line-like setting.

I don't know anyone who's ever tried it, to see what the quality looks like of the actual commissioned pieces. Might be worth it for the price to commission one and see how they actually turn out.

That's scary!
 

Sharon,

I get it that the sample above is painted by skilled artisans on an assembly line. It would be interesting to see the reference photo to check the drawing fidelity, etc. Overall it looks very skilled, technically. the transitions, hues, values and edge control are quite something. I am wondering about the likeness in the eyes and mouth. As a forever image on the wall, that smile and look would bother me.

But, is the BrushStrokes portrait sample really paint or a digital creation?

A good friend in Colorado, I roomed two years ago with at the PSOA Conference, Russ Steuber, is a master at "painting" digitally from a photograph resource. The brushwork looks strangely similar to that in the BrushStrokes sample when viewed as close as they will let you see it. I did a few screen shots of the sample, and cropped a few of Russ' biker painting (to be followed in the next response).

Look close and tell me what you think. Are the sample blow ups actually paint or sophisticated digital paint software. You may notice that the paint is quite smooth with zero canvas or support texture, nor any 3-D texture, as advertized! I suspect it's just digital and no paint in this case, which may be deceptive advertising.

Garth

Russ' painting:
 

Here's some samples of my friend Russ' painting, which is purely digital and a manipulated photograph. I love what he does!

Garth

While some of these might not be real "paintings" as we think of them, a lot of them really are.

The general feeling among the portrait people I've talked to is that this type of work will take a lot of the business at the very low end of the marketplace but will not affect the high end (we hope!) As I said to Gordon Wetmore at dinner at the PSA conference when we were discussing this very question, "Increased sales of Volkswagens won't affect sales of Mercedes Benzes!"

There is a value in having a personal relationship with an artist that can develop the concept and pose along with the client.

How many of the judges you've done, Garth, would go for this type of solution? My guess is none.

But Sharon, do agree with me there is no "canvas" evident in the cute boy and girl sample above? In this case I contend, it's just smooth digital paint.

Gosh, for $620.00 I could copy Apotheoun full size! Should I go for it? ;)

Garth

It looks like this is a photo, printed on a canvas, that has been treated with brush and oil paint in the larger areas, leaving the small details almost untouched. Notice how the white background is painted around the shapes but never into the hair.

Sharon are you saying that photo copyists, living in the west, Europe, must lower their prices and or join Art Royale? Or are you saying that the photo copyists are overpriced?

I seem to recall someone saying that the true artists of today when competing in portrait competition should compete by on the spot from life portraits. Is there someone knocking at the door?

It is my honest belief that if an artist knows his/her craft and can prove this, by painting from a life setting, that artist has nothing to fret about. A master artist has/is worth his/her weight in gold.

Whether an artist is charging extreme prices by copying a photo is the case in question here. One must be careful what one decides. I think the gravy train is soon to end and how will one prepare is another question.

Yuqi Wang
 

I met Yuqi Wang this past weekend at the PSOA conference. He is friendly and unassuming, and took an interest in discussing Marina Dieul's drawings (and even mine). I even bought his substantial retrospective monograph book right out of his hotel room.

He talked at length of the rigorous training artists go through in China. To say the least this benefit is more than evident in his own work.

So looking at these Chinese photocopied portrait examples, we can also see it is self-evident these artists have immense technical skills and training. It is a shame they cannot develop a voice here beyond copying photographs. They might all become beacons like Yuqi Wang.

Yuqi sounds pronounced as "you-chee", by the way. I am glad to have met him!

Garth

Well all I really remember as an impression is they do at least a year of rigorous cast drawing studies, at the threat of a wip, before they are elegible to learn color and classical painting techniques with equal intensity and harsh critiques.

I don't know if I heard this correctly, but I would not be surprised. My Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts seemed half as rigourous at the time I attended, so in a way I could relate to what he was telling me.

Garth

This is an extract from the "Brushstrokes" site.

"The Making of a Brushstrokes

I think it is quite obvious that they add digital paint effects to the photo, like shown in this thread, then have it printed as giclees and the artists gives them a final touch, to add textures.

Some of the professional photographers in our area have started painting over giclees and offering them as "the most exciting new artistic expression in two hundred years" or some such claptrap. They usually heavily paint the environments and avoid the faces. The result is somewhat like the photo novelty booths on the Atlantic City boardwalk where you stick your head through a hole in a piece of plywood and are captured as a flapper, gangster, cowboy or whatever.

One of my students saw one of these guys in the art history section of the library, and he explained that he was going to learn how to paint like the old masters, so he could paint over the giclees even better and make real portraits. Good luck, pal.

Several years ago a local gallery that also brokered portraits completely retooled their business and began to trade in the Asian low-end work. The first time I saw their ad, I felt like a buggy whip maker who had just seen a car for the first time.

After the initial shock, I began to realize that we face the same global market forces that afflict any other work. There may be a few marketing techniques and counter arguments that we can bring to bear to balance the discussion, but beyond a point, we can't keep from happening what is going to happen. We can only make our case as best we can, and hope that certain clients will value the process and the contact with the artist that commissioning work entails.

I realized I have two choices: curl up into a fetal position, or dedicate myself to getting better every day and try to get the work out where someone can see it. I hope there will be a future for what I do, but attempting to control it is like standing on the shore and commanding the tide not to come in. If I let myself obsess, it saps my energy.

One real resource we all have is here, where we help each other continue to improve. If we go out, let's go out swingin' for the fence.

Good luck to you and me--TE

That's what it sounded like to me too. I've got to wonder at how archival this approach is -- there might be oil paint on top, but how does that middle giclee ink layer affect the long term adhesion of the paint to the canvas? I've seen a giclee on canvas where a strip along the frame was wiped off by housecleaners cleaning the frame (no idea whether there was any kind of cleaning product on the cloth?)... but the concept of painting over that and representing it as a 'true' oil painting seems suspect to me . . .