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Message
Posted
Have just posted a coloured pencil drawing of the grey squirrel who visited me throughout this past winter, and hoovered up everything he could from the bird table....Have now got a squirrel proof feeding station, so he only gets what I give him now.
C&C's welcome, please take a look.
http://www.painters-online.co.uk/gallery/picture.asp?id=26381
Posted
Well, have to agree there, although nothing sets people off here causing them to fall out of their bath chairs, more than a discussion of the use of photos, stand by for the onslaught!
My approach now is to use drawings and take them back to the studio as there is room for the imagination and mental editing.
Posted
There's a lot in that - because my back doesn't work as well as it should (so my legs don't either) I have real problems getting out and about in the countryside when the going is soft, muddy, and clinging: sticks slip, or just sink into the gloop. I do work therefore from photographs - my own, and a friend's who thinks himself a bad photographer (as he might be: but "bad" photographs are so much better to work from, because it's easier to ignore the composition, assuming there really was one). Summer, when I CAN get out and about, can't come soon enough...
Posted
I've been using photographs recently, because the weather's been too grey and cold for successful outdoor painting. Using photos is a good way of practising painting techniques, although.my success rate - completed paintings that I like and want to frame- is lower than when painting directly from the subject.
I think it takes skill and experience to paint from a photograph. The difficulties for me are: shadows tend to be black and lack the colour observed in real life; photos are flat and two dimensional, so you can't appreciate the volume of objects; the details in a photo are seductive but can make the painting look too fussy. Still, if I can't get out because the weather's bad, I'd rather paint from my own photos than my sketches.
Posted
I do like to watch the nature programes on tele especialy the coast and the railway walks ,I often get some ideas for a painting from them ,I also like to look across a duck pond to the over grown trees on the waters edge,I would never have tackled a water colour like that at one time, now I love the twisted old trees and long grasses ,and when I see an old farm house from the car window..I notice the way the roof is just hobbled on as an addition to the end gable I turn to my wife and say "wow did you see that old house ",,why do I look for the quirky things to paint ,yet ,the modern mundane passes me by without a glance , Alan
Posted
I work from photographs...you already know that.
You just cannot dismiss art made by those who do as being in any way inferior.
In the same way art painted out in the open cannot be seen as always superior.
It's also about what the artists' body is comfortable with.
Then there is those issues as to how the artists' vision and glasses work together...
That rectangular canvas for me has 9 rectangles...I can only see one at a time.
long range glasses to see the world & short range glasses to see what I'm doing.
I extract those details that I want to include in my painting from as many as 50 individual photographs of just one subject [usually a building]. I never work from just one photograph.
Posted
My view of working from photographs is that they are a compromise. I do think that a bit of experience of working from life will help you to interpret photographs (of similar subjects) better. I also think that the photographs should reflect your own experience - ideally your own photographs. I also think that multiple photographs of the subject are a good idea.
I, too, am looking forward to the warmer weather and the opportunity to paint outdoor again.
Posted
Well I visit the scene and usually make a few thumb nail sketches. I then take a photograph and with the aid of sketches and photo I sketch out my interpretation of the scene on watercolour paper. I then paint the scene in the comfort of the studio using my own interpretation and palette without being influenced by 'reality' . When I do paint en plein air my work becomes fiddly trying to copy what is front of me instead of using my interpretation and imagination.
Posted
to me a photograph will never replace reality,,nor wide screen films and vista vision nor three d television ...no matter how big a photo is reproduced .the items in it are stuck in that plane ,you cant look at a stone and see the spider running in the crevice/// a photograph to me it is dead matter .it wont make up for being out there .
as the song goes //// I may be a workhorse on monday but I am a free man on monday,,, not if your on your rrrss looking for photos on the web all day.
Posted
My preference is certainly to work outside and see my subject in glorious 3d and technicolour. But that's an ideal world .<div><div>I also find it more difficult working from photographs so I take my hat off to people who do. So compromise has to be my own photos my own sketches when the weather is like it has been for what seems like ever. </div><div>Roll on happy weather...load up the car, pop in the dog and off I go.</div><div>Luckily we are all so very different , otherwise this forum would be a boring place. </div><div>
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Posted
there is a competition on at the moment on tv for the best portrait, and you can bet your life some one will win it who has the best camera and the best software money can buy ,,,and you wont be able to tell if its an actual photo or not./
I understand everyone cant get out and about to paint. and using a camera is a good thing,, yes , there are books full of flowers and plants for flower painters . steam engines and so on .so why bother to go out to paint ,but if you try it outside just once in your painting ..if its just to get the distances and the tonal values and sizing ,of objects against each others ,like the stone in the foreground or the fence post, that looks bigger than the bridge in the background ,, like you say we all have different views that's why art is so interesting .
Posted
I have just done two paintings of a female nude, one from a quick drawing done in a life drawing session and one done from a photo I took in the studio. The one from the photo seems shallow and lacking in poetry, it looks like what it is, a painted photo. The one from the drawing on the other hand, because I have had to remember and reinvent the colours and lighting from memory has a lot more emotion and feeling in it. The poetry that was lacking in the photo derived one is present in the gap between the real form of the girl and what I have had to invent. It is this lack of literalness in the drawn image that I find appealing, that you have freedom to invent, not be tempted to duplicate every small variation in colour or tone.Of course this may be put down to my limitations as a painter, but from now on I would rather work from less information rather than more. If I had to work from photos, for instance for a commissioned portrait, I think I would perhaps choose to paint from black and white ones which would have a similar effect of distancing one from the image and leave room for the imagination. Once you ditch photos you find painting a liberating experience.
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