Go for excellence in portraiture

[Alexandra Tyng]

Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell

Blake Gopnik recently trashed the field and I don't blame him.

Either do I. If you look at what he's saying in general, it's not too far off the mark in many respects. Also, it's always wise to see what the "enemy" is saying about us.

But I have to admit I don't see photography as an intrinsic evil. It exists, and it is human nature to find clever ways to use what exists. It's not going to be uninvented; on the contrary, it's becoming increasingly high-tech and accurate. It's how artists use photography that can be detrimental to creativity and to clients' expectations and understanding of what art is.

As soon as visual aids existed, artists used them. Not all artists, but some of the best. They weren't the best because they were more photographically accurate, but because their work had a transcendent quality, a compellingly expressed concept and vision.

Copying photographs might not be a bad way to learn some things, like mixing paint, but it's true you've got to go beyond copying photographs if you are going to push yourself to really put in the hard work that it takes to become all you can be as an artist. If you are painting from a live model, you'll learn a lot more about every aspect of painting, and you will learn it faster.

I like using photographs, but as a visual aid, not a crutch. If I am using photographs, I will use up to 20, even 30, to help me with a single portrait. I don't trace anything! I use my eyes. I get so into what I'm doing, I feel as though I'm right there with the person. I think my portraits end up looking very different from my references. They are much truer to the concept in my head. I also paint from life every chance I get, and do studies from life whenever the client can sit. I go to open studios, and I paint landscapes outside. The continual practice from life has been invaluable. I am not at all afraid of painting anyone's portrait totally from life.

Photos are great for catching a fleeting gesture or expression. Often I'm looking for something elusive, and when a person settles into a three-hour pose, the expression is not there. Of course I could wait for it to appear, and paint around it, while engaging the client in conversation, but most clients don't have that time. Those fleeting expressions are, I think, part of what gives a portrait life. If I can use a combination of life sittings and photographs, I can often fit into the client's busy schedule while also capturing that spark of life and movement in the portrait.

Photography has opened our eyes to innovative composition also. After photography became common in the 19th century, artists cropped figures and included parts of objects at the periphery of the canvas. You can see that in Degas' and Sargent's work, for example. Again, that's not to say we should just take a photograph and copy it exactly, including where things are cut off at the edges. We should think about how to arrange the composition to express what we want to express. But certain compositional arrangements are accepted now that were not accepted before the advent of photography.

Bascially, I'm saying 1) yes, it is extremely important to not be satisfied copying photos if you are serious about art. And 2) it is unrealistic to think photography is going to disappear from the art world. And 3) it is destructive to be automatically critical of anyone, including ourselves, who uses photography. There are many, many ways to use photography besides copying from a photo.

[Steven Sweeney]

Owing to stories too short to be told, like the drawer full of string too short to be saved, my last two paintings have been dogs. Not that they were terrible, but they were paintings of dogs.

This much is true.

A colleague today revealed that she had, sketch pad in hand, surreptitiously captured me at work on one of these efforts, and I post here her depiction, a preemptive defense against charges of working from anything but life.

[Steven Sweeney]

Kidding aside, here's a card worth sliding into the index file for after-the-fact consideration -- what percentage of submissions, and of awardees, of the Portrait Society's annual competition were produced from photographs?

Yet that may not be instructive, because at that level, even those artists are undoubtedly capable of painting from life, and so the photo references are capitalized upon as an edge rather than a crutch. One of last year's honoree works was in fact earlier presented on this Forum as a presumably hopeless reference photo, which was alchemized into precious metal.

But that's the ether breathed at an altitude different from that which I think many members are talking about in these threads, which is the level of training one's eye, one's sensibilities. I think the misgivings are being expressed about the short-circuiting of the development of aesthetic musculature. We're becoming content with being artistic wimps, while machines do the work.

Are those voices in the wilderness we hear? Probably. Is it too late? Probably. How many of us have lately witnessed the triumph of tradition in any aspect of our lives? (And when we do, that alone becomes the subject of celebration, it is so rare.)

Computers and robots build cars now, a natural progression from Henry Ford's assembly-line paradigm. Soon it will be likewise in rendering likenesses in whatever medium you choose.

But there will probably also always be a source, a place, a practitioner, about whom people in the know will say, "You've got to come see this person's work. The studio's hard to find, but you have to come with me and talk to him [or her]. There's nothing else going on anymore quite like it."

It may be enough to resolve to be the artist they're talking about.

[Richard Monro]

Some artists can paint from life forever and never produce a great work of art. Other artists can paint exclusively from reference photos and create a masterpiece that far transcends the reference.

Talent, experience, craft and effort conspire together in all great works. Paints. brushes and yes reference photos are just some of the tools that help get to the end product.

Bougureau created great art. While he could have used photo references, I personally doubt it because he was known to be able to create portraits from memory. Was that the secret of the great masters? Having a photographic recall of images? Perhaps, but if most of you are like me, we can't capture that illusive, fleeting expression that makes a painting live and breath from a mental image of perfect recall. We mere mortals do that via a reference photo.

It is the ability to recognize and capture that illusive image combined with the magic of the ability to create a painting even beyond that image that separates the artist from the mere image reproducer.

For me the debate between photos and life is a tempest in a teapot. What really counts is the end product. Did we create a great work of art!

[Jeff Fuchs]

Okay, I have to admit, this is a subject that

[Tito Champena]

Some portrait painters of renown have told me that after you have mastered the skill of painting from life, you may use photos because by that time, you will be able to edit the photo and not copy it. When you can paint from life, you will discover that a photography carries many errors that you have to discard and screen out, such as wrong values and distortions from the lens. Besides, a photo reproduces only one single and brief look of the sitter that may or may not be characteristic of his personality. Painters who are only interested in getting a likeness can certainly get it quickly from a photo, but a portrait is supposed to represent more than a likeness.
Frequently they ask you to reproduce your "photo reference" along with your painting before they can give you a critique. Jeff is right when he says that most of the critiques center on pointing out "errors" of drawing, by comparing your painting with the photo, as if the "likeness" is the only thing important in a portrait. I said before that some of the most famous portraits in the museums are considered masterpieces, even though there are no photographs of the sitters, available to compare. To me, a portrait has to be looked in its totality, no piecemeal. A portrait does not only represent the sitter but also the painter, a photo only represents the surface appearance of the sitter and leaves out the person and also the painter. Finally, I want to say that before painting, one has to master drawing, just like writers who have to know their grammar before attempting to write.

[Linda Brandon]

I have something to add to this photography argument but I am having some trouble organizing my thoughts about it. I do want to say that 1. it takes a lot of self-confidence to paint a realy good portrait from life and 2. an artist is not going to get that self-confidence from strictly photo work. That fact alone should convince artists to put the time in to paint from life. I think bravery (foolhardly or useless as it may be) is a very big component of being an artist.

Many of the artists I know that do excellent work from photos are also very good draftsmen and do excellent life work.

I think that people in our society are inured to seeing themselves in photographs to the extent that the photographic image is more real than any dubious 'reality".

I also think that models and friends are much, much easier to paint than clients, for a variety of reasons. I frequently draw clients in my studio in charcoal and they figure out after the first hour or so that I am the one having all the fun, they are suffering, and furthermore, they have to pay me.

I personally am trying to figure out a way to do entire paintings from life for clients which are not in the "loose oil sketch" category ot flashy painting.

Oh, that Bourgereau! Incidentally, if there are any satyrs out there reading this who would like a portrait painted from life, please contact me. Now, that would be fun!

[Steven Sweeney]

The critique exercise is, I think, different from the creative process and the "internalization through practice" skills development, the loss of which is being lamented. In the studio/atelier setting, the model would be sitting there, and the instructor would indeed point out every single detail of difference between the model and the drawing or painting. Over time, there would be less and less difference in each new work. That doesn't mean that any art has been created. It means that you have developed the tools to create art.

But we're not in a studio setting here and so the best substitute for looking at a model is to look at whatever reference photo a member may have chosen to post. I look at those photos not as images in themselves, instrinsically worthy of slavish copying, but as if they were indeed the model. It's a lousy substitute, but it's all we have here. And if the photo image is aesthetically or artistically better than the drawing or painting, I point that out. I don't believe anyone has ever insisted that the photo image be copied in all its details, if those details are flawed. I know that I very often add a caveat that modifications are not suggested for the purpose of duplicating the photo, but because they will in fact enhance the drawing or painting, as by, for example, better representing form or a value design.

If a photo image in fact contains useful information that a student artist has failed to see -- which happens quite often, however poor the average reference photo -- then any critique worth the price of admission should point that out. Entirely different exercises are involved as between saying "This isn't artistically pleasing," and pointing out that "This isn't accurate."

If the student artist does not want comments on accuracy, but only on "artistry" or aesthetics, I'd prefer that the reference photo not even be posted, for it then becomes irrelevant. Copying the photo is never the point. It is a resource. It isn't art, any more than a live model is art, nor is a copy of it. The only chance for art is what we make of it.

Again, if accuracy isn't a concern, and if one is confident that a drawing or painting successfully includes all the "good" information in the reference photograph, I see no point in including the photo in the critique request.

I think the uses of photography are getting a bit muddled here, so that we're posting at cross purposes to some degree.

[Jeff Fuchs]

Sorry Steven.

I didn't mean to imply that everyone here is guilty of photophilia. And I agree that the reference photo should not always be used when asking for a critique, but sometimes the photo will be posted in the SOG photography forums, and people naturally refer back to it when they see the finished work in the critique forums.

I wonder, do you professionals allow your clients to see the reference photo again after you've painted the portrait? It seems the client is in the best position to judge the quality of the portrait without looking at a photo, and should probably not be given the opportunity to look for minor differences to nit pick over.

If anybody has suggestions for convincing people to pose for life sessions, please start a thread about it.

[Richard Bingham]

Originally Posted by Richard Monro

. . . What really counts is the end product . . .

Well, who can argue with that ?? FWIW, Bouguereau did utilize reference photographs . . . to what extent ? I dunno.

What is troubling to me is that many painters whose work "isn't half-bad" don't seem to apprehend all that entails in the differences between working from the life, and relying on photographs.