Work from life or from photos?

[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.

[Marvin Mattelson]

It isn't my purpose to justify what I do. I'm just trying to educate whoever here is interested in profiting from my years of knowledge. I have spent my entire life training myself to be the artist I want to be. I've been teaching others for over thirty years.

During that time I've used a wide variety of approaches including working from imagination, from photos and from life. In my experience, training artists is most effectively achieved by working from live models, Not something I came up with by the way. This approach is rooted in the methodology of the XIX Century French Academy which had evolved over previous centuries.

If going to museums and looking at old master paintings was the way to do great paintings then everyone who visits the Met would be a great artist. To anyone who wants to reinvent this particular wheel, all I can say is, good luck.

[Terri Ficenec]

I love photos, they sit so still and so patiently for you. But it took a painting of some peaches from 'life' for me to see the limitations of photography. I took a photo of the still-life setup in case the kids accidentally disturbed it, and was surprised by how flat it looked next to the real thing. All the lush color was flat in the photo. (try it, could be just my lack of camera sense!) That was a lightbulb moment for me. Now, I encourage my clients to give me a couple of hours and sit for a color study and use that together with the reference photo(s). Just that little bit is a big help.

Michele, I say: "A painted portrait has more presence than a photograph." 'Presence' in the sense of there being someone there. For me anyway, photos can seem so stagnant compared to a well-painted portrait.

[Sharon Knettell]

I spent a week in a cabin in Vermont alone last summer. No plumbing, running water or electricity. There were no images at all except on my shrine and the nature surrounding me.

I think I came back with a fresher eye. I was astonished at how much of the portrait work looked alike, even though it was done by a myriad of artists, coming from multiple experiences.

Photography forces you to look at things the way it sees. You don't get to interpret what is in front of you until the camera does. It is like communicating using a translator.

When you have a photograph in front of you, there it is. Done. The next step is what I call rendering, yes rendering. Frozen possibilities. Is it close to the photograph or not? That is how we are forced to judge it.

There is the quality of danger when you paint from life. Will something happen to the subject or model before I finish. Will I have to change my original concept because something more interesting came up? Can I actually get this vibrating , moving subject on a canvas? It is truly frightening and therein lies the challenge.

Perhaps I have a more jaundiced eye and I agree there are a lot of very successful portrait artists, out there making a lot of money and employing photographs. Financial success in the arts, as so often has been the case does not mean greatness.