Work from life or from photos?

[Allan Rahbek]

[QUOTE=Marvin Mattelson] It just can not, in any way, compete with the vision of the human eye.QUOTE]

As Cezanne said: "You paint as if you only got one eye"
So does the camera.

Most naturalistic painters paint that way, and that, of cause, is a personal choice based on personal taste. No problem with that.

If we look at the human vision, it is based on the two eyes, helping each other to define distance and volume of objects. I have often seen cats and birds take there heads from side to side to get a more three dimensional picture of the things they are focused on. You define distance and volume through the angles of the individual eyesight.

That meaning, if you want to focus on every detail in a painting ( as the one eyed camera can ) you must accept it as an unnatural way of perceiving. This is not the way we see things. It

[Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco]

This debate is very interesting: it also provides good arguments in leading the taste of my clients, whose eyes are often so contaminated by photographic vision that they expect a photographic approach.
I found the use of photos as difficult to master as the use of the brush.
Only recently I think I achieved a balance between the one eyed and the stereo vision Allan has so well explained.

I was delighted when I read David Bailey's A Secret Knowledge, were he explains how almost all the great portraitists of the past used any optical device available(camera lucida, lenses, mirrors, prisms).

As using the same palette of a great artist does not automatically make us as good as him, so using photos does not make a good painting, unless we have the skill to go beyond the photo; a skill which you can only aquire by painting life at any occasion.
I was distressed when my tutor at art school could spot all the paintings done from photos from the live ones and made the good proposition of incorporating live sittings in every commissions!

Quote from Byatt's Essay ' Why painted portrait?'


"What distinguishes painting (or drawing or etching)
From photography

[Michele Rushworth]

Very interesting discussion, especially about the monocular vs binocular vision of the camera vs the artist.

I also strive to create something "better than a photograph" and I'm interested in how you, Ilaria, "lead the taste of your clients" in that direction.

How would you (and the other artists on this Forum) fill in this sentence:

"A painted portrait is more ________ than a photograph." Would you use words like "personal", "powerful", "sensitive"..... what?

[Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco]

I think, as Byatt says and also Marvin, that the painting is the image plus my sensitivity, my aestethic sense, my favourite colours, size, scale.
And the more the reference photo is used, the more in the eyes of the client the painting will have to compete and be compared to that photo (I try never to show it), that's why it is clever adding some live sittings even if you then go back and repaint everything from the photo...

There must be a reason for a client to choose you instead of someone else. If they were charmed by some painting in your portfolio they want a little of that special charm to hang on their wall. The hand of the painter is unmistakably recognizeable, much more than the finger on the shutter button unless you are Avedon.
I once got away with saying that comparing a painting and a photo it 's like comparing live music to a record.

ilaria

[Mike McCarty]

As using the same palette of a great artist does not automatically make us as good as him, so using photos does not make a good painting, unless we have the skill to go beyond the photo; a skill which you can only aquire by painting life at any occasion.

Llaria,

It would be an interesting experiment to take a person from birth, give him the mission to paint people portraits. But, he can never ever paint from life, only from the photos he takes. It would be interesting to see how he would turn out.

The truth is this fiendish experiment continues to be carried out on me.

[Marvin Mattelson]

Mike, how exactly was I ambushed? I look at this thread as an opportunity to share my feelings about something I consider to be of tantamount importance.

Alan I would consider any guidance or philosophy that came from Cezanne to be 180 degrees off course. When I was in art school I had Cezanne literally shoved down my throat. The work I do now is as much a negative response to Cezanne as anything else. The idea that good artists use one eye is in my opinion misguided at best and more like patently wrong. Using one eye gives us a flattened view of the world with hard edges. This is how modern art is made. Flat work on a flat surface.

My approach to painting relies on the idea that in order to create the illusion of spacial reality one needs to understand and replicate the way the eye works and relays it to the brain. By using binocular vision we perceive variations in edges, since each eye views the same edge at a different angle. Edge variation is a must in recreating reality.

The most important aspect of using our own visual acuity is utilizing it's increased sensitivity to value and color variations. The camera cannot even come close in this respect.

The other important difference is being able to perceive the three dimensional solidity of the form. This is the essence of real drawing, as opposed to copying. This is easily observed in the works of those we call old masters. Photography compresses the form and we are left with an image that has been arrived at by virtue of a mechanical and not an intellectual process. Photographs are most often distorted in one way or another., as a result.

Mike you'd have to do your experiment as a controlled study, using a set of twins, allowing one to work from life and condemning the other to work from photos.

[Mike McCarty]

Marvin,

I think you discount what the brain can do, regardless of what it can presently see.

If I am given an image of a person to view (a quality photograph) I think it is possible to draw conclusions and make decisions based on previously processed information. And therefore interject information into the result that exists no where else but from your brain.

If I go to a museum (and I have the ability to discern what is quality, not a small thing) and I stare long and hard at quality, I believe that I can take that image and use it to inform my painting. My photograph then provides me the road map, my brain then formulates a response based on my brains composite of what it believes to be desirable.

This to me doesn't seem all that far fetched. You say that when you paint from a photograph your previous life paintings inform your decisions. Isn't this just a cousin to that?

I know there are quality paintings being produced by people that are each taking different paths.