Painting from photos

Long time no see folks.  Honestly I haven't had much to write about lately, but a comment I received on DeviantArt today gave me some inspiration.  I did talk about this briefly before (http://samburleyart.blogspot.com/2012/01/montana-5-study.html), but allow me to elaborate.

So, painting from photos... this can be a contentious issue.  For one, yes it's always going to better to draw/paint/whatever from life.  But much of the time it's not practical.  The sun is in your eyes, or there's bugs getting in the paint, or it's too windy out, etc.  The list is as long as you want it to be whether they're legitimate excuses or not.

But I'm not here to criticize - even as a landscape guy, I do shamefully little plein air paintings, or even sketches.  I justify it to myself by taking millions of pictures on my Canon.  I could drive to twelve different places and take 20 photos of each location in the same time it takes me to spend an hour in ONE place, studying ONE scene.  That's a good trade off in my book.

Anyway, getting to the point... When you ARE painting from those hundreds of millions of photos  (*TANGENT* - Just like it's better to paint from life than photos, it is MUCH better to paint from your OWN photos than Google's or anyone else's) I see two options:

1 - You like the photo so much that you're going to copy it directly.  This is okay, but be careful...  Art-making is about making decisions - whether that be color palette, composition, lighting, or form; by copying a photo directly a lot of those choices are removed from the equation because they've already been solved.  In my opinion you're left with little besides technique and how to mix a  certain color.  Which is fine if that's what you feel you need to work on, but be aware of the drawbacks.

2 - There's an element or elements you like from a photo (or photos) that you want to extrapolate from.  Meaning, "I like the way the shadow comes off that mountain" or "I'm going to stick to this color palette.  Here's an example:

< main photo reference











                 finished study >









If it isn't clear, what I really like about the picture was the big hill on the left.  The way the light hit it, the composition of it's big shadow, and the beautiful greens of the grass.  Obviously I changed a lot, but stack the images and it's quickly apparent how close parts of the two images are:

The composition is largely the same, the color palette is almost a direct copy, and yet some relatively simple changes and additions make for a much more dramatic landscape, without copying the photo directly.

To me is makes for a much better learning experience overall, and a better, more ownable finished product.

Let me know what you guys think and if you'd like some more examples of this.

Montana 5 Study

Hey folks!  Apologies for the long hiatus -it's been a fairly exciting two months.  I quit my job, bought a car, renewed my lease, and visited some friends all on top of a mass of deadlines and holidays.  But now it's 2012 and time to get back to that grindstone!

I did take some time off officially for Xmas and New Years (mostly spent playing Skyrim), so opening Photoshop for the first time in two weeks left quite a few turds on screen.  This was an attempt at getting back to the basics and putting my brain in the right place in order accomplish anything:

It was pretty closely based on some photos I took at sunrise of St. Mary's Lake in Glacier National Park (Montana USA).  Here was my reference:

At a glance the thumbnails look pretty identical, (and if I hadn't taken the photo myself I'd probably never exhibit the art), but that doesn't mean I wasn't faced with any artistic decisions.  FOr one, there's an additional mountain peak and the compositional is slightly different.  My colors are more saturated and the darks darker. 

That might not sound like much and I'm not trying to sound defensive, but I feel that drawing from life (or photos) is much more than copying what's in front of you.  It's about knowing what to include, what not to include, and what to add in a way that isn't blatant. The impressionists had it right (at least the way I see them) in that art isn't about mimicking the world around us, but in reproducing it in a way that's better than the original.  It trims the fat while preserving the heart and soul, and that (when done right) makes a person or place feel more real than any photograph could ever convey.

Anyways, more to come (soon!?..!) and happy 2012!