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Mind set.
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Message
Posted
Just doing some F B browsing and fell into a site for SAA. Had a quick nosy ( it's not an organisation I belong to... I did many years ago when it first began then it changed) . Anyhow I saw an entry from someone asking for pictures to use to copy .
Why do I find this so alien? ...I know lots of people on here use other people's photos and I can see a use for them. Reference, inspiration ,but not copying.
I can see a use for them when you cannnot get out and about but still not for out and out copying.
I also use my own photographs for reference but would never even "copy" these.
I use pics for reference on occasion, I belong to the R S P B and have many of their wonderful magazines so if I need to to know relevant detail I can usually find it .
I also look up reference stuff on line and will use it.
But to want to pay for other people's photographs then make a detailed copy I really cannot get my head around it.
Creating should be inside the artists own head , a thought ,a spark then a working out how to do it...observe, think about, work out.
I know I'm on a hobby horse but I don't understand. Please could anyone enlighten me .
Or another thought am I completely boring in my fixation with this..? go on , I don't bite...well on occasion.
Posted
I'm sure that you already know my thoughts on this subject Sylvia, and everything that you have said is almost my own words. I am also unable to come up with a reason, it's totally beyond me. Like yourself, I also use photo's as a reference point and I have made no secret of it, they are a damn useful source of information but that to my mind is where it should stop.
There was a new guy posting on the forum a day or two ago who only copied from 80's photo's, didn't do any sketching at all, didn't really explain himself too well as to the reason for this, anyway, he seems to have disappeared rather quickly as they do and he also like our rather abrupt friend yesterday was posting work on the forum, surely they know what a forum is. I digress slightly Sylvia so forgive me but if you post on the forum with a title that asks a question then you should expect an answer, or at least make yourself clear.
Posted
I think the style in which you paint and the outcome you hope to achieve may have some bearing when deciding whether or not to use photographs. When I am drawing from life or out doors [ I can't stand the ridiculously pompous term 'en plain air' ] my work is looser and lacks detail. Now for many artists such as your good self Sylvia, the inclusion of too much detail is something you're not interested in capturing perhaps, but for many it is and therefore photographs are an invaluable reference material. I love to paint my grandchildren and am constantly 'sketching' them from life but if I want to 'draw' or paint them in more detail then I will use a photograph rather than a loose sketch as reference. Personally, it's more convenient, practical and enables me to include more detail which I like to do. I'm not interested hypothetically speaking, in 'strapping myself to a mast in a raging storm' for the sake of my art when I can take a quick snap with my camera! I'm making myself a target I guess for the 'what's the point in producing a painting with detail, that's what a camera's for' brigade but so be it!
I do wonder however, how many of these intrepid artists that you see battling the elements to capture a fleeting moment actually retreat to their cosy studios and then revert to a photograph in order to complete the 'finished' work?
Posted
I sometimes use my own photos for reference, and I have many thousands of them. However if I wanted to paint a mountain scene, I would find myself a bit short. I rarely see snow, and am a bit envious of others who have been posting snowy scenes on the gallery, so I would have to other's photographs. A few weeks, there were amazing paintings of the Himalayas. I have never seen sights like that. However I don't use other's photos. But I have a longing to paint those blues and purples of the distant snowy caps. I'm a bit short of icebergs in the photo collection too, despite going to Alaska and Spitsbergen. They only seems to have little icebergs, without the big blue shadows. So yes I can understand it. Personally I have a lot of other projects to finish before I resort to other's photos, but others do not have the same opportunities to travel as much as I do.
Posted
I'm in the Alan and Sylvia camp as far as photographs are concerned. Apart form the technical distortions that photographs impart I do not understand the desire to paint in a 'photographic' style. If a photograph is what you want by all means use the camera but most painters are trying to capture something of the atmosphere of a scene or the emotion of an image, and in my case usually failing! I use plein air sketches as a basis for studio paintings sometimes augmented by reference photographs but I value the facility to alter the composition, leave things out or include figures that weren't there for instance, and to move away from the 'actual' scene to a portrayal depending on memory and the feeling of a scene. At best a photograph is, for me, a reference to be used less and less as a painting progresses and simply copying a photograph is in my view likely to create more difficulties than it solves.
Posted
I use my own photos - and quite honestly, whatever they may say, I don't know an actual practising artist who has not at some point used a camera for reference details; to take just one example, inspired by a couple of the posts made here, if you want to paint children, or animals, you know they're not going to stay still for you! I remember trying to sketch our Alsatian (long gone, sadly): I had the pad on my knee, she sat there as bidden .... but then got fed up. I was aware of her inching closer and closer..... then she put her muzzle under the pad and lifted it right out of my hands with a swift upward movement, and sat back with a grin all over her silly old chops.... I worked from a photo after that...
We all do it. That's not really the issue Sylvia has raised. What's incomprehensible to her, and many of us including me, is just taking a photograph and slavishly copying it in paint. I don't see the point. As reference, yes, of course .... and why not? Monet did, for goodness' sake and I know I'm not better than Monet.... But people can make a fetish out of these things - you mustn't use a camera; you mustn't use white in watercolour; you shouldn't use black in a painting.... well blow all that. Do what you like. But be aware if you copy a photograph literally that the colours will be out, the focus will need adjusting, the shadows will be too dense, probably, and the composition has been done for you by someone else - and that's one of the worst things. I'm working from a photo I took myself right now (or I should be, I've taken a break!) but I've moved trees around at my convenience, and I deliberately took a "bad" photo, not a very carefully composed one, because I didn't want to impose preconceived ideas on myself - and I certainly wouldn't want anyone else to conceive them for me.
So my suggestion is always to work from your own photos if you can, or from those of someone you know well (it seems to help; you sort of make allowances for things - can't explain, but I know what I mean!), then put it to one side. You can always refer to it for specific detail, but don't try just replicating it.
(I see en plein air has come in for attack again! Reminiscent of our late friend Bloodaxe, who hated the term too - I agree, basically; I do use the term, out of habit, but most of us don't even pronounce it properly so maybe it should be retired; trouble is, there are so many terms from the French or Italian that we use, not all of which have an exact literal translation - "grisaille", for instance; a useful single word for black and white?)
http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net
http://www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk
Posted
Oh this is an old one...with roots in the camera obscura.....?
I can see 'copying' as a means of learning, yes, and a very useful one too.
However, a photograph has its uses in many other ways...Capturing a passing weather cloud formation, for instance, or a small detail in a gathered plant which will be dead before long, etc. (Incidentally, that abbreviation etc covers a lot of ground, doesn't it!)
The human eye can only carry impressions, it cannot record them in detail, which is what makes photographic images so useful to some completed artwork.
But yes, I am entirely with Sylvia and others in that copying a photograph is not desirable, it is merely skilled reproduction. Everyone on this site has the ability to do it, we are all capable of copying. But it does not come from the mainspring of creativity, and I think that is what you are saying, Sylvia? It is a false representation.. (Risking the flak here, Ruth....)
Are we perhaps afraid ,when we create an inspired, maybe scribbled impression which has been dictated by sheer feeling, to post it ? I often sketch, but hesitate to post. More fool me, perhaps?
Or am I missing the point?
Posted
Not intending to interfere in any conversations, but I'd like to make a couple of points on this in a non-argumentative way of course. I read somewhere here someone commenting about dross being posted on the site and I can't agree with that in any way. Everybody has different skill levels and people won't be encouraged to post their work if they feel in any way mocked or demeaned. No comment at all may be disappointing, but at least it won't totally discourage anyone. Art isn't quite so easily defined or categorised as some explanations would have us believe. At times I also post things that are mere scribbles or rambles of the paint brush, dross if you will. Only art appreciators will understand why. Does everything we do have to be a master work?, surely not. Copying usually gives way to creativity or at least the desire of it, somewhere along the line and I think the main reason people (including me at times I'll freely admit) do it is for the pleasure of creating something personal and the sheer joy of painting. A copy after all is just a personal rendition of something and if it's totally accurate to a hair, why do it anyway since copyright forbids any misuse? Who does it harm? I left one site to avoid doing something physical with my very largest paintbrush to one "critic" who didn't actually paint, to avoid getting arrested ( I jest of course and the subject wasn't copying but sarcasm). Since then I just laugh and carry on. I have developed a "live and let live" attitude ever since I realised none of my "creations" ever go beyond my own front door (except on the internet of course where I'm a member of millions of like souls, good innit? ). Practise makes perfect......well, usually not, but sometimes maybe . (-:
Posted
I have often used other members (Alan lately for instance) works posted in here as a reference using their subject/scene but never knowingly copied. Copying a steam railway photo from old has been useful for detail etc but always with my own touch take on it.
As for mind set, mine is in turmoil at present as I am due to go off for a life session as usual and would love to try something different but my mind ain't set.
Edited
by DerekSnowdon
Posted
If you want real insult - and why would you ....? - you really need to go to the newspapers' art critics. Not so much the late Brian Sewell, who at least knew what he was talking about, but in the supposedly liberal Guardian, where one Jonathan Jones has savaged the reputation of everyone from Jack Vettriano (I forget the words: something about "daubs") to Maggi Hambling: I can't get over how viscerally brutal his review of her entire output was, as if she'd personally offended him.
Not sure why the venom, really. Perhaps someone using the word "dross" here (not me, was it?) is at least preparing artists for the monstering they'll get if they presume to show their works in any London gallery within Mr Jones' waddling distance.
What people choose to do is up to them; I think Sylvia's point is just that it's hard to see the point of copying line for line and tone for tone, that there's next to no creativity in doing that though there may be technical skill, and that perhaps painters might be happier in their work if they didn't feel that they had to make their paintings look like photographs. The point should liberate rather than confine them.
http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net
http://www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk
Posted
The world is indeed very small so to inflict another of my little pieces to demonstrate the point:
‘The world’s mine oyster’, scribed Shakespeare the writer
but I’m not all that sure I agree with the blighter
for it seems to me sitting here in the cloister
it’s quite claustrophobic if you’re inside an oyster.
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