Painting From Life vs. From Photos
Mind you, the most perfect steersman that you can have, and the best helm, lie in the triumphal gateway of copying from nature. And this outdoes all other models; and always rely on this with a stout heart, especially as you begin to gain some judgment in draftsmanship. Do not fail, as you go on, to draw something every day, for no matter how little it is it will be well worth while, and will do you a world of good.
—Cennino Cennini, 14th century
Cennino’s statement that studying from nature is the best way to learn to draw is something that resonates today. My question is, what constitutes “copying from nature”? Is drawing from photographs the same as drawing from life? Or is working from photos more like copying the work of another artist? The question is of practical importance, because as Cennino pointed out, studying the work of another artist will influence one’s personal style.
We cannot separate how we see from the way photography has informed our vision.
. . . it is best to remember that every object made by man carries within it the evidence of the time and place of its manufacture.
–Joseph Veach Nobel
If an artist draws from photos, does he or she inevitably absorb the unique “style” of the camera (not to mention the style of the photographer)?
I haven’t drawn for years, but I remember the hardest part was how to render the three-dimensional world with line or shading on a flat sheet of paper. Starting from a photograph goes a long way toward solving that problem. Drawing only from photographs would obviously stunt some drawing skills, but I would expect that drawing from both photographs and life could speed learning. Aside from the rendering question, I don’t attribute much “style” to the camera, though the photographer never disappears.
An artist copying from a photo is looking with ‘lens baby’, wide angle, telephoto or 55 mm eyes. But then, of course, one could enrich using one’s own imagination, see see Stomach Clock .
Re every object made by man carries within it the evidence of the time and place of its manufacture.
I heard that Nikon lent a photographer headed for Yosemite their new design, an ‘oblong (?)’ camera that supposedly takes panoramic views – technology improving in the direction of vision.
Two limitations of photos:
Photographs give a single perspective, but the eye does not — it moves continuously and so there is no single point from which we are observing. Photographic perspective limits the artistic possibilities.
And, with photographs, someone has already composed a scene. The artist who copies from photos will be using something of that composition.
Karl, there’s one important piece of information missing that makes it hard for me to answer your question. Is your question about drawing from photos, or about drawing from someone else’s photos?
Either way, drawing from photos, one is seeing very differently than with the naked eye. As June mentions above, the eye moves and refocuses, and it constantly adjusts to lighting conditions. Even if you keep your head perfectly still and just look through one moving eye (fixed point of view), you can still see everything in focus and see good detail in both light and shadow.
But seeing with the naked eye is not always better, as the famous battlescene painters of the 19th century found out, much to their embarrassment, when the public started looking at photos of horses running. It turns out they had all been painting them wrong (the positions of their legs).
I learned how to draw both from life and from photos. But when I did my paintings of flying people, I always shot photos. Good luck getting someone to hang in the air (in a convincingly moving pose, no less) while you draw and paint them! Same thing with my raven paintings. Dino wouldn’t have held still unless I’d had him stuffed.
Photos are a great tool for creating drawings and paintings. Ask Degas. But if all you ever do is draw from photos, then I don’t think your skills develop as fully. And as far as working from someone else’s photos, it can be useful if you need reference for an element of your composition, but if all you are doing is copying theirs I don’t see the point.
David,
Do you really have a raven named Dino?? What joy! I’m a crow fan, myself, but I have a fondness for ravens. Although they are a bit haughty. Crows have no pride, it seems, but a rich sense of humor.
Karl, like Cennini, I think that nothing can replace painting/drawing from the actual; it’s where you get a sense of the full complexity of life and the difficulty of getting a handle on it.
I have always found copying representational paintings of the Masters to be easier than doing life painting or drawing. Reality simply is over the top with materials, pummeling us with decisions and visions that we have to choose among.
Drawing from imagination?
About 20 years after my grandfather had died, I surprised myself by drawing his face realistically.
This very time, I am practising drawing to relearn what my subconscious once led my hand to do.
David, do you really have a raven named Dino??
No, Dino belonged to a co-worker of mine named Doug Smith. Back in the mid-nighties I was working at a digital effects company here in L.A. I had done a series of concept sketches in my journal of double-portraits, of myself and a raven, and one day Doug walked into work with a huge raven on his shoulder. I was flabbergasted. “That’s my painting!” I said to him. “This is Dino,” he said. That weekend I bought Doug lunch, and we spent an hour shooting photos of Dino. We did some where Doug held Dino and I took photos from various angles, and others where Dino was on my arm or shoulder and Doug shot the pictures. I used the photos as reference for my series of raven paintings, though I didn’t copy the composition from any of them and changed quite a few things. For example, Dino was never actually on my head (his claws were sharp!).
Doug had rescued Dino as a little ravenlette (?) when he was being attacked by other birds, and raised him. They lived in a second-story apartment overlooking the boardwalk at Venice Beach. Dino would hang out on the sill of the open window and watch all the the interesting people walking by below. He was a pretty comical bird, and all the locals knew him. One day the authorities came by and took Dino away. It turns out that it’s illegal to keep certain wild animals as pets, even if you’ve raised them and they’re more civilized than many of your relatives.
I’m a crow fan, myself, but I have a fondness for ravens. Although they are a bit haughty. Crows have no pride, it seems, but a rich sense of humor.
I really love crows too. We have hundreds of them that hang out at the big apartment complex where my wife and I live. My favorite time of day is bird hour (twice a day, actually; dawn and dusk), when they are all cawing like crazy and flying from tree to tree. It’s like a Marx Brothers movie.
City versus country.
As another crow and raven fan, I enjoy hearing their calls in the woods nearby. But I only get to see them rarely and then only from a distance. I presume that they don’t like local humans because a nearby farmer hung one of them as a scare crow in his cornfield.
Birgit, sometimes to experience nature you have to come to the city.
Indeed, Birgit, come to Portland and I’ll introduce you to the city crow who thinks I am a invader of his/her territory.
I walk early in the morning, generally following the same route, sometimes wearing a short black wool cape. A crow on a particular block really objects to my caped appearance and will spot me and set up a loud ruckus and then fly above me until I’ve gone up the street a ways, presumably out of from his immediate territory. I talk back to him, but he isn’t impressed.
Speaking of being impressed — I am impressed at your visual memory.
Drawing from nature and drawing from photographs are two entirely different things. When drawing from nature the artist needs to interpret the 3-D form and render it successfully on a flat surface; a photo already provides an “interpretation” or rendering of 3-D reality. Today, some people even skip the drawing stage by simply tracing the image, or worse, by projecting it directly on canvas. However, in order to become an accomplished draughtsperson, it is best not to rely on photos but to draw from life (or even sculptures in the museum).
Antonia
I reinterpret photographs to suit a sentiment that I experienced when I had seen the picture for the first time and then paint a likeness of the photo. From my perspective both drawing from nature and from a photo is pretty much the same as you are trying to interpret a manifest scene in front of you in a formal way…
Sunil: That’s true, for sure. However, in the context of art practice and the philosophy of art there’s still a difference between drawing from life or from photos. In the past, during the baroque, students learning the art (read: technique) of drawing and painting relied on copying from prints (etchings) before they moved on to drawing sculptures, and, in a final stage, drawing or painting from nature. Today’s photos are like the etchings of the 17th century (also means of mechanical reproduction). Obviously, photos have become an integral part of painting (see Gerhard Richter and other contemporary artists) and I am not arguing against that trend. But in the process, many artists have lost basic drawing skills, for example, being able to render a 3-D form on a flat surface in a convincing way. That’s not a problem, obviously, if you have an anti-realistic artistic agenda. But for those striving to work in a realistic idiom, it’s good to keep working from 3-D nature to hone one’s drawing skills. Photos should not be a shortcut to working faster (IMHO).
All the best, Antonia
Antonia,
Very insightful comment, but I had a quick thought. The artistic expertise involved in the rendering of the third dimension on a two dimensional slate would be similar whether the individual sources it from a photo or from nature… Is that not right? (No, I do not have any kind of anti-realistic artistic agenda).
June:
Speaking of the single perspective matter: I would add that, the farther away something is, the more fixed the perspective becomes. Every little twitch in a close-up situation can produce a different perspective. On the other hand, celestial objects billions of light years away, are perspective proof: there’s simply no way that you can get another angle on them. The photograph taken of such an item is all you can have. Our discussion resides somewhere in between.
Also, the celestial object is composition-proof for the same set of reasons.
I would like to know if any among us sketch directly from the landscape motif. Somewhere along the line I picked up a video called Canyon Dreams. Some of the sequences are speed-ups in which clouds morph giddily and shadows surf across the contours of the Grand Canyon. (Yes, Morph Giddly was and is a musician). To sit and render that might be tough. Have to call in the Constable.
Finally, what do you think of drawing from a stereoopticon or a hologram?
Sunil:
Thanks for the feed-back. Could you give an example of what you have in mind? My comments were meant to be more general, going back to “ancient” drawing and painting practices, as taught in the renaissance and the baroque (in Italy and Flanders), as well as in the 19th century (French academy). The assumption then was that less artistic expertise was needed to copy from prints (our photos) than from nature directly (sculpture, then later models and so on).
Antonia
Sunil,
In principle, drawing from a photo would be optically equivalent to drawing from the original scene using one eye fixed at the location of the camera lens. But, in fact, we experience the world and understand its 3D-ness by moving our head and using the stereo capability of our two eyes. Simplifying the richness of the full experience is what’s hard; much of that simplification has already been accomplished by making a photograph. To be sure, there are still a lot of choices in drawing from a photo, and it still involves plenty of manual skill. Nevertheless, the task of reaching a given final result is, I think, quite a bit easier.
If it is the artist making the photograph, then he or she is still responsible for major decisions like perspective and composition. But it’s still a shortcut to let the camera help with the 2D rendering. No that there’s anything wrong with that; I’m sure I would do it myself, although where possible I think I would prefer to use the photo as an aid, rather than work only from the photo.
Antonia and Steve,
I guess I should clarify my statement (sorry for being a little vague out there). I was commenting within the narrow realm of painting peoples faces where I would not find much difference between drawing from a photo and getting to see the actual person up close (of course the rich interpersonal interaction with an actual person is present is nevertheless more favored – but who can afford live models these days).
Yes, I do see your point with respect to the alternatives and the advantages gained in the arenas of dimensionality when you can actually turn, swivel and move your head to comprehend scenes from multiple viewpoints and then lay down your impressions on the canvas. This is especially so in landscape painting.
Sunil:
Yes, those live models can be expensive. Especially the young one crying in your most recent post.
Jay,
Yes, very much so ;-).
Thanks, Steve, for the further clarification!
Everyone should choose the right way for themselves. For me, drawing and painting without the aid of photos is the goal to strive for. Drawing and painting antidate the age of photography and are different disciplines. They are “ancient” practices, the product of the meticulous coordination of hand and eye; they involve skills that surpass the tracing or copying of photographs and that require years of hard work and training. Sadly, many of these skills are no longer taught in art schools.
If I may add a personal note: I learned drawing not by copying photos but by studying and copying old masters’ drawings. In doing so, one gets a sense of the “grammar” of drawings, what lines to use to suggest form and one starts to appreciate the sheer difficulty of it all. The “photographic eye” is all around us and it’s great to make an escape from it…
(Would the Impressionists have come up with their color theories by studying photos? I think not. And I’d even hazard the theory that their return to nature was a reaction to the medium of photography.)