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The Handsome Portrait
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Posted
I should have made it clear I meant portraits, though you may have meant that anyway. I don’t think photos can achieve the quality of colour that Sam Adoquei achieved in the above example. That may be because of the process: the dependency on light. It may be that the portrait’s a lie and we like it that way. I do think one is easier. The photographic image itself is created in an instant. Up until that point both photographer and painter are doing pretty much the same thing. Though the painter has to draw the image first. Or the photographer can take many frames, hundreds in the digital age, and choose one. However that doesn’t mean the photo contains something special. But I think the photo still lacks the particular quality of many paintings.Re. the Sam Odeque portrait. Why do paintings give us so much more than photographs? And when a photo does work it’s because it imitates the qualities of a painting.Well, I don’t know if they are better than photos, but the thought, emotion and skill is always apparent if done well. To philosophise, it’s all copying, ie, from the mind, life or photo. The argument to say that one is easier is only perspective, depending how complicated your work is, of course. All are fine in my view and the great feeling I get when completing work from a photo is the same from me making it up by picturing it in my mind. Maybe it’s the work I put in?
Posted
Yep, pretty much in line with Martin here. Good photography is an art in my opinion, when we see a photographer’s best work, he’ll most likely have taken many to arrive at that ‘best’.
For portraiture, I prefer drawings and paintings. The camera lens records everything, the artist’s eye SELECTS.
When an artist uses photo as reference, we still get something that’s the artist’s own interpretation. That’s why I prefer paintings. Just an opinion.
Posted
Paintings having a soul is a step too far for me Peter. But opinions vary. I visited the National Portrait Gallery a couple of years ago, I was stood in front of this self-portrait by the British Artist Gwen John (around 1900)...
...I had the fanciful notion that she was examining me. When she'd painted it she'd been gazing intently into a mirror to make this painting, maybe I was getting the sensation of that intense gaze? Who knows? What it meant to me was that the painting gave me the feeling I was looking at a living breathing person. The best portraits can do that. There are many photographs of Gwen, none of them give that impression. All this is trying to explain the unexplainable. Maybe there's a little magic in some art?
...I had the fanciful notion that she was examining me. When she'd painted it she'd been gazing intently into a mirror to make this painting, maybe I was getting the sensation of that intense gaze? Who knows? What it meant to me was that the painting gave me the feeling I was looking at a living breathing person. The best portraits can do that. There are many photographs of Gwen, none of them give that impression. All this is trying to explain the unexplainable. Maybe there's a little magic in some art?
