Ouch

Why Peter....? . If you want a representational picture take a photograph. Why do you want to replicate it in oil. Prophesy you never, ever will not unless you are either an old master or if you ask advice re painting and drawing that you take it and have an inbuilt exceptional talent. As I have said before copying is easy .... We will never , never agree on this. I do use pics on occasion not to copy a picture but as photo reference, . It's not an art form. Whoever said painting should only resemble a photograph need their bumps feeling. I do take photographs I have used Photoshop but I don't get excited about it, I also enjoy looking at lovely photographs. But to create a painting from my own thoughts, my own work my own efforts not a copy of someone else's concept . If that painting of mine " works" then it's the best feeling in the world. I thought you wanted to do a similar thing , I thought you really wanted to learn to paint and draw. But you never , ever will if you copy . The frustration I feel with you is that you are very genuine but you just want to pick other peopes brains and then say " oh that's not what t I want to do ". You will only learn by experience and practice , practice , practice . I honestly did not want to get into this controversy . I feel very strongly about how I work and have been more than happy to share .

"Just read some comments saying painting should only resemble a photograph" - WHERE did you read this? Point me to the culprit(s), I have the instruments of torture heating up in the brazier now.... You're surely extrapolating from what was said, because I can't believe - not without some proof - that anyone would be so flaming stupid as to have said anything like this. If a painting looks like a photograph, in my book it's failed miserably in its principal purpose. I have a friend who's a professional photographer: he is one of the very few people from whose photographs I would try to paint, because I know him well, know how he thinks and how he looks at things - but it would never be my aim to replicate them in paint; that has nothing to do with painting, it's just slavish copying: it doesn't even deserve to be called a skill. A photograph CAN be a point from which you can take off and improvise, like a musical phrase to a jazz musician. Take it as any more than that and you've completely missed the point about both painting and photography. Now tell me where you saw those comments: the codling grinder is oiled and ready for use, and I've warmed up the scarifying implements so they're just at their very peak of agony-inducing horror. Feel no compunction about this; they deserve it.