I’ve been criticised for painting from photographs.
Once, someone asked in the comments to a post why I was copy-painting (his term) a perfectly good photograph.
Kind of ironic because it wasn’t a photograph at all, I was working from life. In fact, I never work from photographs.
This is the picture that provoked that comment:
It’s a picture of the set-up I had for that painting. I still use a very similar set up for most of my paintings.
Just to clarify, here’s a wider shot showing the full set up:
I guess you could be forgiven for thinking that the first picture was of a photo of the freesia set up next to the easel, that I was copying.
Because it does look quite flat, sitting in that frame. And it’s a photo of the set up, after all.
Painting is cheating!
But the criticism is justified, you could argue, from the poster’s point of view.
The whole point of that set up is to flatten the subject, to enable me to see it two dimensionally, to make it easier to paint it onto a two dimensional surface.
I also generally paint with one eye closed, to keep my measurements more accurate and to further ease the difficult job of translating three dimensions into two. It also helps with working sight size, and making the one to one comparison between the subject and the work.
Is that cheating?
Is the grid cheating?
Is measuring cheating?
Is sight size?
If none of those things are cheating (and personally I don’t think they are) then working from photos isn’t cheating either.
Because all those things are about helping to view the subject conceptually in two dimensions. I say conceptually because all visual information is reduced to two dimensions on our retinas before it’s processed by our brains, right?
The only way we can see in three dimensions is to have two eyes, and I paint with one eye closed.
Like a camera.
For or Against
I’m not completely against or in favour of working from photos.
I’ve seen very accomplished work done from photo reference, enough to make it impossible for me to assert that working from photos is always a bad thing.
But I don’t think that in itself is enough to quell the objections – not all of mine, anyway. There’s more to this story. I think there are dangers inherent in it, which some artists are perfectly capable of avoiding. Usually, I find, they’re the more accomplished ones.
But some artists don’t seem to find it so easy to avoid them. In fact a lot more of don’t, especially beginning artists. And photography can have a negative influence, I think, both on the work and on the development of the artist.
Here’s why I think this is – and also why I think some of the most common arguments used against photography are mistaken.
The real thing
Much of my objection to working from photographic reference has a philosophical root. Which kind of makes it hard to explain. But I’ll try.
Experience at one remove
It’s this: Our lives are increasingly mediated. Direct experience seems to be in short supply these days.
- People watch other people living their lives on reality TV and so live their own less completely.
- The food we eat is processed in factories to the point where we don’t know what’s in it. Some of it isn’t really food at all. Lots of people don’t even know how to use their own cookers.
- We make more friendships on social media than we do in real life, and those friendships are more superficial, they come with less responsibility.
- We travel everywhere by car. People even make very short journeys that they could easily walk by car, hermetically sealed in and cut off from their surroundings.
In fact the Internet and TV in general seem to me to be often used as mechanism for living life vicariously, at one remove, rather than experiencing anything directly.
But a more fully experienced life is very close to us, if we want it. It’s mostly a matter of paying attention.
Its door opens near. It’s a shrine
by the road, it’s a flower in the parking lot
of The Pentagon, it says, “Look around,
listen. Feel the air.” – Poetry, by William Stafford
Making art, to me, is about taking the time to experience things directly.
I want to experience the lemon I’m painting. I want to touch its surface, smell it, be sitting in the same light that is reflecting off its surface.
There’s just something different about it. I feel that there is, but I can’t explain to you rationally what it is. That’s part of what makes this subject so difficult.
When I paint a lemon, I’m trying to paint my visual impression, but also something else that I can quite put into words. If I try, I fail and the words I find look ridiculous to me. I laugh at them, myself.
I want to paint what I feel about the lemon, but how ridiculous does that sound? What can you really feel about a lemon?
I don’t know. All I can really say without sounding like a buffoon (hopefully) is that the experience of painting a lemon that’s physically in front of me, and painting a photograph of one is different. And making art for me is more about the experience of making it, the involvement in the process, than the end result. I lose interest in my paintings almost as soon as they’re finished.
A more practical problem
All of the usual objections people have for working from photos – it’s cheating, its makes the image two dimensional, et etc – can be easily shot down (although the shooting down is not always accepted!) by rational argument I think. I won’t bother to go over them here because they’ve been done to death elsewhere, and will continue to be, no doubt.
But there are also very practical considerations that can make working from photos problematic. One in particular I think is the most important.
Cameras change the colour balance and especially the values of the subject. That’s especially noticeable when the values are outside the range of paint, which happens much more than you’d think.
A backlit screen will give a wider value range than a printed photo, that’s true, but it’s still much smaller than the value range we see in nature.
I think that if you’re learning, if the work you’re doing is about learning value say, then it’s a good idea to work from life. You have to learn yourself how to compress the values and I think that’s very good practice – much better than accepting the camera designer’s ideas about how value should be compressed.
What you learn from that experience will help you every time you paint, and it will also increase your expressive capabilities. If you can manipulate value, you have one more tool at your disposal when creating an image.
And if you then come to work from a photo, the knowledge you have about value will help you do a much better job of it, rather than copying the values you see exactly.
So if you’re doing a performance, if you’re making a piece of art, then I think it’s fine to work from photos. Doing so is a different process that working from life and the end result will likely be different, but that doesn’t mean better or worse. Just different.
But if you’re learning the basics, or if you’re doing studies specifically to improve your values or your colour in general, I think it’s better to work from life.
What!? They worked from photos!?
It surprised me to learn that some of my favourite painters worked from photos: The naturalists.
Dagnan Bouveret (a student of Gerome, who also used photos), Bastien Lepage, these kinds of painters often used photo reference in their work.
I find it a little ironic too, that those painters represented the academy in their day, and were in opposition, in many ways, to the impressionists. But they used photos. I wonder how many of the people that denigrate working from photos and use working from life as a badge of achievement know about that?
Proceed with caution
When I paint, I prefer my experience unmediated. I prefer to make my own choices about how I handle the values without being led by a camera’s decision about how to compress them. I prefer to make my own judgements of colour and chroma too, directly from the subject, rather than be wondering how much the camera has changed them.
But I recognise that it’s just my choice, and other choices are perfectly valid for different reasons.
I do think that if you learn by working from photos, and you create your paintings from photos, and especially if you never work from life, your work will always bear the hallmark of photography.
If you’re fine with that, by all means go ahead. No one can tel you it’s wrong to do so (although they will, loudly and often). In my view, though, the artists who do the best job of working from photos are also just as capable of working from life.
My last word on this is that although I said at the start that I never work from photos, I wouldn’t say that I never will.
At some point in the future I might. But I hope that if I do, the work I’ve done from life will inform what I make enough to avoid simply copying the photo. Because that, I really can’t see the point in.
Best wishes and thanks for reading,
Paul
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This is true. The painter(or creator) will see/feel the difference. The casual observer however may not.
Paul,
I really appreciate your sort of overall philosophy, or maybe I should say your way of talking about painting. You seem to have both feet on the ground. And your work is good. I tend to bolt when I hear certain art talk that gets ….well , you know.
Regarding painting from photos, or photo reference, I say why the hell not? The natural world is pretty good at setups. The underlying abstraction is there, solid, and beautiful. My feeling is that the artist has all the license in the world to turn his own photo into a painting, without taking a browbeating from a purist who’s got nothing better to do than judge another’s practice.
I spent decades climbing at high altitude, sometimes with the sponsorship of such as Nikon, and Fuji. I also worked a few years as a photographer. I have some great images from some of Earths most magnificent setups. I will continue to make paintings from those images with glee. Those photos grant me the most wonderful reverie as I recall with vivid clarity the experience of being there surrounded by unspeakable stark naked beauty.
Photography , like any other setup, is just a start, and in some cases, it’s invaluable. I guess it’s possible to get out there at 17,000 feet and 30 below zero and plen aire paint those scenes by fair means, but it’s not bloody likely.
Guilty,
Glenn
Hah! Brilliant 🙂
Perhaps you want to paint what you feel about the “light caressing the lemon” rather than what you feel about the lemon.
Well said! I’m sharing this!
Hi Paul,
Thanks you so much for your posting. I find it interesting and very informative as well. My thoughts on this are that there is nor right or wrong if you choose to work from photos as long as you are aware of the difference. In my experience and I agree with you is the process that matters. From beginning to end when you paint from life for me it is endulging myself with the overal experience of touching, smelling, looking for special signs that will make the object (a fruit or a flower, etc) special and unique to others. A photo in this case will be an aid since fruit and flowers last for a short time, and in my case I do not like to rush to finish the painting. I also think there are many factors that will influence the use of photos. When I used to teach children, I used the Project approach method which I relate to painting from life. We worked on projects without thinking too much of the finished project but the entire process of how to get to the end was the most important experience because each child would experience something different and they were exposed to a different ways to achieve great results. A well planned project will be a successful one. As artists we all,have different approaches and we all go through ups and downs but at the end we all have learned something new.
Paul, thanks again for your honesty and sincerity. I am learning a new approach with your class about mixing color and the Munsell book. I love it and I am taking my time. You are the greatest artist and I am very happy to have you as part of my learning experience. Blessings.
Hi Paul,
I have to admit I like using photos just as much as a live set up because it gives me more opportunity to paint things I like. I don’t have the props I need for set up nor do I have space to keep the props. If it’s fruit or flowers that’s easy to buy but adding things of interest is the problem for me. Many of the local classes teach by using photos and that’s actually how I was taught as well. I have painted my grandchildren with photos and I was very happy with it. Thanks for the article and your opinion.
Looking forward to the time when HDR displays are available that can show accurate HDR photos. I’d love to paint Mount Fuji as the sun sets.
I’m a painter who must, of necessity, work from photos. My subjects are dead. I paint free for parents portraits of their children killed in the spate of current Mideast wars. I’ve painted more than 200 of these portraits by now. I’ve learned a few things about painting from photos over the last dozen years. You are absolutely correct when you say the camera (now some kind of electronic chip) changes colors and values. I’ve learned to lighten my darks and darken my lights. Shadows that look black in a photo rarely are that dark. Blown out, pure white highlights rarely are that light. Distortion is a problem, too. I tend to “correct” distortion as I see fit. When the far hand, for example, looks way too small, I enlarge it and the same when the opposite occurs. Then, there is the problem of photo quality in general. Some of the photos I receive from the family are woefully lacking. Sadly, sometimes, it is the best photos they have. What to do . . . what do do? So, sometimes, I find myself “making it up.” as I go. I’ve done a few from very poor b&w photos. When I work from life, it’s usually a simple still life . . . something to keep me busy. Thanks for your generous help.
that’s amazing.
You are right with the sentence that your work is less interesting for you when you have finish it. I know that well. Because it is a wonderful process during painting. I learn (almost) everything about lemons (not just about this one), and I’ll never be able to look again unprejudiced a lemon as before painting this picture. – And that’s what I love so much by painting process.
Informative article! I would appreciate the many critics out there to take a moment to consider that not all artists have a choice in using photographs. I am among a growing group of artists with visual and other disabilities that would not be able to paint or create if it was not for photographs and technology to capture subjects and locations we cannot travel to and enlarge photos and surfaces as we work.
I am just thankful every day that I still have the ability to express myself, no matter how difficult, using which tools or in what manner.
The end result that elicit a response is what is important, in my opinion. Not whether it is true to life or like/unlike a photo. We see colours differently as people and those of us with less than one eye – artists and appreciators – enjoy what we can, however we can. Critics: live and let live!
Thank you for this comment. I was thinking exactly what you expressed regarding artists with physical or situational limitations. You have expressed my thoughts far more eloquently than I, a person blessed with full use of my arms, legs, and sight, could have. More power to you for finding and using whatever resources and adaptations that you require to continue making art.
A fun game to play, is to go onsite make quick sketches and look deeply then come to the studio and paint from the sketchbook and memory.
Another, for those who cannot physically make it out on location, is to paint from memory or inner vision-i.e. make something up.
Then there is setting up a driver’s seat studio-good for 20 degree weather. (not so good for rental cars).
If you compare the results of these games with painting from a photo-you can perhaps judge for yourself how to go forward.
It is so personal, isn’t it.
There are lots of rights and wrongs in painting techniques (too many!) but working from photos or life is not part of that. Both have their pitfalls and both have their advantages. You
might want to ‘experience’ the lemon but I might put it aside and digitally zoom in on its texture in order to see closely and to paint a hyper realistic effect. Or I might catch a pose in a person that otherwise would not last. Others prefer the more subtle values of real life, the more gentle colours of the landscape, and the experience of the feel and smell of it all. Each to their own, but working around the many pitfalls of either method is key and the arena of true skill.
I love your article and all the comments, too. I so agree with you about the deep experience you/I/we have when experiencing deeply the real-life subject we are painting. This depth is so evident in the very example you use at the beginning of your article: it is so obvious that your painting of that flower is so much more lush, more earthy, more full of form and substance than the actual flower (or your photo of the set-up). THAT is what makes the painting so important. You have conveyed what you deeply feel/see in the flower and others ( viewers) will never see those kind of flowers the same way again. They will have ever deeper experiences of real life, as well as the deep experience of your painting. That’s why I paint: to see, to experience, to feel, to LIVE!
I couldn’t agree more! I’m primarily a landscape painter and my work is about the direct apprehension of reality and its transferral to canvas. I don’t work from photographs, or imagination, or even sketches; I work exclusively from life
I can just barely justify the use of photographs if you took the photograph yourself, but any aesthetic or emotional content that may find its way into the painted copy of a photograph derives exclusively from the photographer, not the painter. I just don’t see the point: find a magnificent outdoor scene, photograph it, take it back to the studio, load it onto your computer, photoshop it, project it onto a canvas, trace it and then paint it; or, find a magnificent outdoor scene and paint it. Why would anyone even consider the first option, unless they lack the necessary skills to do the second? And that’s what it comes down to: people who lack the skill to paint from life justifying their need for a mechanical crutch as a positive aspect of their art; a feature, not a bug.
I agree totally.
I suggest artists should put a note in the back “painted based on photo(s)” or “painted from life”.
This also informs the audience. I think even the most art knowledge lacking person would say “oh, so this was copied from photos” and realized that perhaps the artist is kind of lazy or lack sufficient drawing skill from life.
For people with some art knowledge, knowing the painting based on photos will allow them to look at other aspects of the painting other than drawing skills.
When an artist sets up a still like in his or her shadow box, there is a great deal of manipulation going on. The constant shifting of the position of objects, exchanging objects one for another, etc.
But also a great amount of time and thought and judgment is spent in arranging light. Ultimately, there is no inherently “natural” shadow box set up. When the artist is finally satisfied with the setup and ready to begin painting, what he or she will paint is their interpretation of how the scene should look.
Everyone’s lemon in the shadow box will be different — there is no “essence of lemon,” there’s the individual artist’s creation of the lemon before manifested by the process of the setup.
I’d suggest that one can do the same thing with a photo through PhotoShop. You can take a picture or be given a picture you like and with PS you can create a unique representation of that picture. You can move objects around just as you arrange them in the shadow box; there are endless light and shadow variations you can create. Ultimately, your photo setup will be unique to you before you begin painting.
I don’t think there’s a right or wrong when it comes to the question of real life versus the photo. But I do believe that one can construct a truly individual photo to paint that meets the artist’s aesthetic vision, the same way one does when preparing the subject in a shadow box.
This is a great article. Your statement, “…. is that the experience of painting a lemon that’s physically in front of me, and painting a photograph of one is different. And making art for me is more about the experience of making it, the involvement in the process, than the end result.” is very much my mantra. As a plein air painter I experience the world, life moving changing, etc. I also compose the painting as I’m doing it and from life I feel I am able to choose from a much richer variety of possibilities, not that there isn’t that available from a photo or photos. My good memories from painting from life are just that, where as from a photo there isn’t as much to remember.
This is a great article about art and photos! For me it was simple. I was just “afraid” to work from life for fear of light changes, subject movement and actual 3D form in space.
There is just something easier using photos BUT the work I do from life is much more rewarding to me. When I finish a piece from a photo it’s far less appreciated by myself than a piece from life. I try to work from life whenever I can but photos still rule the roost for now. Dedicated space for painting will help with life set ups for me and that is something I am always working on.
To me, the essential magic of painting, the sort of sorcery we participate in , is that we leave marks on a flat surface that give the viewer the added dimension of depth. That a photograph flattens a three dimensional scene for the painter in a sense then constitutes unfair means. The sorcery is diminished I guess. Maybe it becomes voodoo. One is poking pins into a doll . Not quite the same as poking pins into ones ex.
It is so refreshing to see how contrasting views complement and support each other, stressing that the main issue is to enjoy and create beauty, not the end product, based on the rich experience of the process itself, which is unique to every individual,
Is it better Bosch or Dalí than hyperrealism? we all play in the same orchestra and do our best to produce a beautiful ensemble…
all that you said about the lemon reminded me of this book i read recently “Proust was a neuroscientist”, the part about Cezanne. is quoted with something like “I will conquer Paris with an apple”.. a lemon in your case :), in Mexico sadly, those who are good (and not so much) at copying from pictures are viewed as better artists than us that try to work from life. I had a chat with Brianna Lee some time ago, about working from live model all the time being expensive and often hard to get times for sessions synched, lately I did a couple drawings that I started from life and finished from reference shot by me during the session, they have a lack of … flavor. taste?… like you mention. compared to work done entirely from life.
anwyay. i hope i made sense in what i said. love your work and thanks for sharing with us.
Hi Paul, Just found your pages and really like your ideas. I don’t paint from photos . In describing the difference between the photo and from life expierience, I remember a piece I once .read about theatre play.
In this play there is a part where a stool must be brought on stage. So the play stops, the stage is empties, and the stool is brought out and left there. The play resumes.
So someone comments, offers the remark, “that could be done by a machine dropping the stool into place,you know”. The director replies,”but there is no poetry in that”.
I will be doing some painting in a small sitting room in a flat. I don’t think it would be possible for me to build and use a shadow box as a tool for painting a still life, in this small sitting room. Do you think that is make or break for doing a realist still-life painting or is it still possible to do this type of painting without a shadow box?
Reply•
Hello Paul, first of all congratulations for your excellent work and also the courses you are offering. Re the subject of photography, to paint or not to paint from I agree with you especially when it comes to teaching art. I used to attend school of arts more than thirty years ago and at that time access to photography was very limited and we didn’t have internet. So my training was based on still life and imagination. This helped me a lot when I come to paint now a days because I can compose my own landscapes using photos only as a basic reference to construct a particular tree for example. It is very hard for me to paint from photos that I didn’t captured myself as it is the experience that drives the painting and not the actual scene. When teaching I also use still life objects and if using photos I always try to push my students not to enslave themselves to the photo especially to colour and values. Besides that I believe in teaching the basics of drawing and painting, mixing colour, etc which I always follow the classical tradition as a reference and hence working from life is the best way to do it if you want to see form, colour and how light behaves on different objects.
Well done and keep going.
Thanks Christopher, I will! And thanks very much for sharing your perspective. I couldn’t agree more 🙂
Hi Paul,
Good analysis.
I have thought about this question for a long time, perhaps 40 yrs or more.
I am a self taught artist and I don’t remember I had any conversation on using photos for painting when discussing art with an art student of an art academy in the early 80s.
When younger as I practiced painting, sure I used photos and I considered them of no art value, just a learning process.
After much thought, I consider painting anything that belongs to realism that the painting is reflecting realistically (meaning the viewer can tell what it is) of whatever is being painted has little value if painted from photos. The painter is called illustrator, not artist.
As we know, one very important reason why we love and appreciate painting is we marvel the skills the painter exhibits, particularly drawing skills when it comes to realism. To me, a talented 8 year old can paint quite well based on a photo, but on real things, even Picasso could not.
As you can see from this angle of thought, I would consider photorealism not very highly. No matter how those photorealism artists claim of its importance, it is just at best good illustration of good visual effects. Not true artists. More so, why dont they just throw away brushes and use photoshop or any image software to do the job. Let the printer do the job instead of treating our hand like a printer.
Another important point is that artist paint (realism) by seeing the objects directly with one’s own eyes, the information processed in the brain and the elecrical signals pass down via the motor nerves and muscles to execute the brushes or whatever tools the artist is using to make a painting. This is far more personal, which is what great art is looking for, than going through a photo.
Another arguement is considering the technology advancement. If we push the use of photos as a justifiable tool to paint (to compensate one’s bad drawing skills) to a future situation where people can implant artificial eyes capable of the function of a camera that enables the person to paint via camera captured images (converting 3D to 2D) and keep the image in the mind like a photo to allow the person to paint by copying the image in the mind (like copying a photo), would the final art work from such a painting process still valued by the public as art and the painter marveled as artist?
Another analogy, if one discovers painting genes and we now engineer the embryo to highly express such genes so the baby grows up with the most talented artistic skills ever existed, would then the public still appreciate the baby’s art works, or appreciate scientist’s technologies (ethical or not another story)?
Bottom line, if one cannot paint as good from real things as painting from photos, painting from photos is cheating. As long as painting from photos are still accepted, any art shows should add one piece of info next to the painting –painted from photo(s) or painting from real things (plein air, or from life). I am sure we owe the audience such an information. Anyone with some knowledge knows that painting from photos is a lot more easier than painting from the real thing and would understand that painting painted from the real thing charges higher is reasonable.
🙂
George
I wonder if there’s an aesthetic and perhaps ethical difference between;
– Working from a photograph or photographs the artist has taken himself as first-hand references…especially en plein air The artist has stood in that place, absorbed it’s ambiances, choose the framing of the photograph. Perhaps taken several photographs to reference the changing light or different lighting conditions.
– Working from an other’s photograph as a second-hand reference.
James Gurney recounts in his blog,
https://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-sad-fate-of-konstantin-kryzhitsky.html