Go for excellence in portraiture

[Jeff Fuchs]

I picked up a recent issue of American Artist from the library not long ago (December 2005 issue?). There was an article about painting from photos, versus life. It included a quiz: "Guess which paintings were from photos". I really couldn't tell.

I think that part of the problem with photos is that we tend to switch gears when using them, and try to make a more identical copy than we would from life. Working from life, one might start with a nice gestural sketch, and go from there. The same artist might skip the gesture when working from a photo, making a strict copy, which looks like a copy.

The artists who use photos successfully say that they rely on their life painting experience to get them through. It's a hybrid approach. The life work makes the photo work better.

I absolutely agree that I need more life study. I really enjoy making excuses, though. I have a big mirror behind my easel, so I can easily glance back for a different perspective as I work. Maybe my easel is facing the wrong way. I should turn it around and do a self portrait from time to time. Too bad I have such an unpleasant face.

[Geary Wootten]

My one more observation on this subject would be to offer the suggestion that Whistler, Sargent, Rubens, and the rest of the masters we've spoken of here, were almost unbelievably good artists. What they did, in fact, was genius. The fact that any of them may never have used "light and mirrors" in any fashion didn't make them geniuses. That was their born gift. The fact that they worked out their masterpieces, like Bouguereau, with sometimes a hundred sketches and finished drawings of each subject is absolutely essential in realizing how some of them acquired such perfectly rendered paintings.

I believe it was as Mr. Whittiker states (and I believe his only intent) , the fact that the study of drawing and painting from life is incredibly important. It's important because that is where we all grab the molecular life force of a thing. It's where the organic aspect is born, if you please.

I also agree that it can and has become very difficult to please clients as the decades have gone by. This is probably due to the fact that photography has gotten so dang good! It's made everybody much more 'sophisticated' visually. It's exactly like other technological scenarios, such as audio. I mean c'mon, how many of us can hardly stand listening to our favorite music on vinyl or a cassette any more...as opposed to enjoying it on a CD?

And I'm sure most of us can almost feel Sharon's life-changing soul-wrenching decision to move into an arena where she feels she honestly NEEDS to be with regard to her artwork. Even though her portraits she's made are extremely well done (in fact, forgive me, I see them as superior to the Hogarths and Cassats posted) and the colors, the buttery smooth textures, the realism is so well executed, I can sense her desire to acquire an unction to move into a whole other realm artistically. I say God Bless her for "the call."

And I'm quite sure that if we, as Mr. Sweeney has presented, were actually around this table in real life with mugs in hand, and our best artworks hanging on the walls, we would all be getting misty-eyed support from each other in regard to our individual desires and goals.

I lift my mug and say, may all our goals be met and all our strokes be genius!

~Geary

[Richard Monro]

Even after 90 sittings the portrait still did not look like Stein. However, it definitely was a Picasso. His vision is what shows through and his training helped him achieve that vision. Early Picasso's show that he could paint a formidable likeness, but what he is known for are the art works that went beyond the image.

I agree with Sharon that all great figurative artists had basic skills and craft honed to an exceptional degree. Life studies were and continue to be critical in the development of such skills. However, to me, it is the vision beyond the image that makes great art sing.

The question is not whether or not to use use tools like photos or grids, brushes or palette knives to get to end then result, but rather do we have the vision AND basic skills to produce that great piece of art.

So let me summarize what I think this thread is trying to tell us:

1 - Acquire the basic skills of an artist That includes the proper use of all the artist's tools including photo references (without being a slave to them).
2 - Build on those skills with live models wherever possible.
3 - Above all, be fearless in having a vision and then execute it to the very best of your ability.

[Alexandra Tyng]

Richard, I wholeheartedly agree with your summary. Well put.

[Geary Wootten]

You know Sharon...my wife and you are two women I know of who don't like THAT term. She's a classically trained soprano singer and she will concur that she's never met a "sissie" that became a good soprano.

~Gear

[Richard Monro]

Amen. Every successful person I know always had a strong core confidence in what they were doing and in their vision. They would charge ahead in spite of all the nay sayers. Indeed art isn't for sissies

[Tito Champena]

I believe that a critique is a great teaching tool that helps the student (we all are) to SEE like a painter and to improve our artistic TASTE. To ask: "are you satisfied with the likeness?" is an unnecessary question, because if one isn't satisfied with the degree of likeness in a portrait, no paint would have been used, only charcoal or thinned paint for a sketch.
Once a painting has been finished, the more useful teaching comments would be about composition, color harmony, achievement of the illusion of atmospheric depth, roundness of form, adequate perspective (linear and aerial), mood, etc. Of course, to obtain these effects on a painting, one has to have adequate drawing skills, a sense of color harmony, adequate use of edges and most of all, to be able to put together an attractive combination of shapes, chroma and values that make a painting a pleasant picture to look at. The likeness of the sitter doesn't make a painting good or bad, it's the total effect that the artist has put on the support that counts, regardless of whether the painter used live models or photos, and also regardless of the painter's artistic or stylistic goals. As I said it before, when I look at a painting as a whole, I can feel attracted by it, rejected by it or causing no feelings at all. I prefer to be told you: "why don't you try it again, your painting does not look good..." rather that try to dissect it into edges, color temperature, proportions, values, etc. As serious painters, we all are supposed to be able to pick up most of our errors in technique and be able to correct them without somebody having to tell us "this is what you did wrong". I have seen many paintings submitted for critiques that have been "corrected" according to various "advices", and to me, those paintings never stopped looking flat and unattractive, because the problem was deeper that an edge being too sharp or an "unnatural" color..

[Allan Rahbek]

Using a photo requires that you have taken one and that is where the problems begin.

Sharon is putting her finger on a sore place and we know it.

I once tried to have a debate about this issue, in the tread

[Geary Wootten]

Originally Posted by Allan Rahbek

Thinking about it makes me want to postulate that I have seen more painters being good photographers than the opposite.

To sort of "piggy back" you Allan, this statement makes me think we should all think more like SCULPTORS than anything when we are drawing and painting from life, photos, or the combination of both. I say this because I always am adding on and then taking away stuff when I'm working. Just like a sculptor. Oh, to be like a Heidi Maiers!!!

~Gear

[Steven Sweeney]

I was about to quote and comment on the same words of Allan. In fact, learning the fundamentals of painting a good picture completely changed the way I take photographs, even if I don't intend to use them for references. If what I see in the viewfinder wouldn't make a good painting, I usually don't press the shutter button anymore. It's really jazzed up my photo albums a lot.

But another aside -- not a continuation, because as I said, I've contributed what I have on the subject, but I realize now from intervening comments in another thread that I've been misunderstood here, and a clarification is needed.

For critique purposes, by all means post the reference if you'd like. It's always useful to some degree. As I said before, it's essentially the "model" to which we compare your execution. To reiterate, posting the photo is most useful if you want to know if your painting accurately depicts the information in the photograph.

The catch is that, even if it does, it still may not be a good picture, in terms of design, composition, or other elements. That assessment can be made from the painting alone. However, it still may be useful to see the reference (the "model"), simply because it could be the case that the vision, as it has been put, in your photograph actually exceeds what is revealed in the painting. In that sense, seeing the photo could concededly provide some basis for discussing elements other than mere accuracy.

And it can go the other way. A reference photo could, yes, "prove" that the painting was accurate, and yet prove too much, if the result is, say, a poor value design in the photo itself. You must be willing to hear that, too. (If in doubt, consider pre-posting in the reference photo critique thread.)

If nothing else comes of this thread, it may be an appreciation of the fact that you are the artist, and you are in control of your artistic expression, and you, not a photograph, are responsible for what you put on the canvas (and for what you put on your palette, and so on).

An analogous pitfall that is heard by every teacher of fiction writing is that, well, since it "really happened!" (or, since it's in the photo), it is therefore a believable and good story. That is as false in visual as in written art. Another is the protest that it took 10 years of selfless toil to write a manuscript for a novel, and therefore it must be worthy and publishable (that is, "good.") No it musn't.