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I always found that practice weird. When using a photo as a source it feels like you're just taking someone else's vision and photocopying it on a canvas. Yes

I always found that practice weird. When using a photo as a source it feels like you're just taking someone else's vision and photocopying it on a canvas. Yes there are many photos that you can call art, but if you're not the one that took the original photo it feels like most of the creative effort was not yours and you're just showing off your brush/pen technique. As a disclaimer, I have 0 talent when it comes to drawing/painting so I'm pretty much clueless about the creative process of modern painting.

dagw 5y ago
When using a photo as a source it feels like you're just taking someone else's vision and photocopying it on a canvas. There are lots of ways of using a photo as a source. A lot of the 'art' comes from choosing which techniques and paints and colors to use to capture the feeling you are after. You can also choose to make choices like adding/removing elements, changing the field of view or moving the point of view, playing with perspective etc. to make the composition more interesting. You can give the same photo to 100 different artists and you will get back 100 different paintings with 100 different artistic choices, some of which will appeal to you on an artistic level a lot more than others.
- cntainer 5y ago
  Thank you for the details, and I agree that what you describe includes plenty of creative effort. I guess my scenario was much more narrow, as I was thinking about doing an exact copy of a photo that you didn't take yourself. Doing an exact copy limits greatly the number of artistic choices you could make as most of the choices were made by the photographer. Just found out this is actually a thing called photorealism where the artist is expected to also take the original photo. Feels good to read about something else than software and politics for a change :).
watwut 5y ago
Is it weirder then trying to become good in literally any other craft or skill? People spend hours trying to become good at coding competitions, games, sport, musical instrument, embroidery, hoby electronics ... you name it. Why would "trying to become as good as possible at creating realistic drawing" would be weirder then anything else? The technical skill involved in making it look hyper realistic is huge.
- cntainer 5y ago
  By "weird" I meant that having great technique doesn't automatically translate to great art. It could translate to greater craftsmanship, faster and more precise work, but by art I understand the process of applying your own creative filter and emotions to whatever you want to represent/imitate in whatever medium. I feel like I'm going to deep into this "art" thing so time to get back to a domain where I have more experience, software development. Being great at touch typing is an awesome skill that many people train but typing fast doesn't make you automatically a great developer/architect/manager. I see the effort of exactly copying someone else's photo similar to how developers do "coding katas" to hone their fundamentals. It's basically practice, not really creative problem solving. Nothing wrong with honing one skills, but in my book skills are tools to be used as part of a creative process. They don't replace the creative process, but they can elevate the end result.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Artists themselves do call it art tho. They value the technical skill on itself too, apparently. And talk about it a lot. And then it becomes separate field where you can try to excel or competition on itself. (Also, in subgenres like manga when they talk about quality of art, they typically mean technical skill more then ability to convey emotions.) It makes it something you don't value or like, which is 100% valid. But it seems to be fairly within what artists themselves call art.
    - cntainer 5y ago
      I understand that people can call art whatever they like. One can argue that doing an exact copy of a photograph with the end result being indistinguishable from the original photo is some kind of "meta" art and the lack of creativity actually puts focus on the technical skill and the effort of the artist, as a kind of "anti-creativity statement" type of art, "there is no artist just paint and effort". But my non-artistic brain would still rate this lower compared to the original in terms of creativity, insight, originality. Yes you can raise a skill to the level of an art, but then wouldn't the actual performance of the skill be the artwork? And the resulting picture just an artifact that has no artistic value without the original side by side + a description/video describing/showing the actual effort? On that note, I think I'll stop. I feel I'm getting high just from all the meta-ideas I'm writing, lol.
yanmaani 5y ago
What's wrong with brush/pen technique?
- cntainer 5y ago
  Nothing, it's a great skill to have, and one that I never invested in.
rdtsc 5y ago
The painter themselves can take the photo. Photos can help if the subject or the scene is hard to be around long enough to paint. Say, an artist painting impressionistic city streets in the rain. It’s hard to stay in the rain and paint, but they can take a photo and paint at home, while recalling the feeling of being at the scene - the cold, the wetness, the sound of the splashing water, cars driving by, etc.
- cntainer 5y ago
  yep, I already addressed this in another comment, that's photorealism, and the artist always takes the picture so painting it is just the last step in the overall creative process. my point was that it feels weird for me to call it art if you didn't take the photo and your just doing the last, arguably less creative, step. Not that it doesn't take a great deal of effort and skill to achieve it, it just feels somehow "lesser".
  - rdtsc 5y ago
    > Not that it doesn't take a great deal of effort and skill to achieve it, it just feels somehow "lesser". Yeah, it does in a certain way. Say, I take a picture then send it so someone to make a "painting" of it. I does feel a bit "lesser". Of course, depending on the trend in art, it may be that's the whole point of the piece -- to highlight that everything is just a copy of a copy and so on. Basically, it could be a deliberate part of the process like say https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962/ https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbel...

dagw 5y ago

When using a photo as a source it feels like you're just taking someone else's vision and photocopying it on a canvas. There are lots of ways of using a photo as a source. A lot of the 'art' comes from choosing which techniques and paints and colors to use to capture the feeling you are after. You can also choose to make choices like adding/removing elements, changing the field of view or moving the point of view, playing with perspective etc. to make the composition more interesting. You can give the same photo to 100 different artists and you will get back 100 different paintings with 100 different artistic choices, some of which will appeal to you on an artistic level a lot more than others.

cntainer 5y ago
Thank you for the details, and I agree that what you describe includes plenty of creative effort. I guess my scenario was much more narrow, as I was thinking about doing an exact copy of a photo that you didn't take yourself. Doing an exact copy limits greatly the number of artistic choices you could make as most of the choices were made by the photographer. Just found out this is actually a thing called photorealism where the artist is expected to also take the original photo. Feels good to read about something else than software and politics for a change :).

watwut 5y ago

Is it weirder then trying to become good in literally any other craft or skill? People spend hours trying to become good at coding competitions, games, sport, musical instrument, embroidery, hoby electronics ... you name it. Why would "trying to become as good as possible at creating realistic drawing" would be weirder then anything else? The technical skill involved in making it look hyper realistic is huge.

cntainer 5y ago
By "weird" I meant that having great technique doesn't automatically translate to great art. It could translate to greater craftsmanship, faster and more precise work, but by art I understand the process of applying your own creative filter and emotions to whatever you want to represent/imitate in whatever medium. I feel like I'm going to deep into this "art" thing so time to get back to a domain where I have more experience, software development. Being great at touch typing is an awesome skill that many people train but typing fast doesn't make you automatically a great developer/architect/manager. I see the effort of exactly copying someone else's photo similar to how developers do "coding katas" to hone their fundamentals. It's basically practice, not really creative problem solving. Nothing wrong with honing one skills, but in my book skills are tools to be used as part of a creative process. They don't replace the creative process, but they can elevate the end result.
- watwut 5y ago
  Artists themselves do call it art tho. They value the technical skill on itself too, apparently. And talk about it a lot. And then it becomes separate field where you can try to excel or competition on itself. (Also, in subgenres like manga when they talk about quality of art, they typically mean technical skill more then ability to convey emotions.) It makes it something you don't value or like, which is 100% valid. But it seems to be fairly within what artists themselves call art.
  - cntainer 5y ago
    I understand that people can call art whatever they like. One can argue that doing an exact copy of a photograph with the end result being indistinguishable from the original photo is some kind of "meta" art and the lack of creativity actually puts focus on the technical skill and the effort of the artist, as a kind of "anti-creativity statement" type of art, "there is no artist just paint and effort". But my non-artistic brain would still rate this lower compared to the original in terms of creativity, insight, originality. Yes you can raise a skill to the level of an art, but then wouldn't the actual performance of the skill be the artwork? And the resulting picture just an artifact that has no artistic value without the original side by side + a description/video describing/showing the actual effort? On that note, I think I'll stop. I feel I'm getting high just from all the meta-ideas I'm writing, lol.

yanmaani 5y ago

What's wrong with brush/pen technique?

cntainer 5y ago
Nothing, it's a great skill to have, and one that I never invested in.

rdtsc 5y ago

The painter themselves can take the photo. Photos can help if the subject or the scene is hard to be around long enough to paint. Say, an artist painting impressionistic city streets in the rain. It’s hard to stay in the rain and paint, but they can take a photo and paint at home, while recalling the feeling of being at the scene - the cold, the wetness, the sound of the splashing water, cars driving by, etc.

cntainer 5y ago
yep, I already addressed this in another comment, that's photorealism, and the artist always takes the picture so painting it is just the last step in the overall creative process. my point was that it feels weird for me to call it art if you didn't take the photo and your just doing the last, arguably less creative, step. Not that it doesn't take a great deal of effort and skill to achieve it, it just feels somehow "lesser".
- rdtsc 5y ago
  > Not that it doesn't take a great deal of effort and skill to achieve it, it just feels somehow "lesser". Yeah, it does in a certain way. Say, I take a picture then send it so someone to make a "painting" of it. I does feel a bit "lesser". Of course, depending on the trend in art, it may be that's the whole point of the piece -- to highlight that everything is just a copy of a copy and so on. Basically, it could be a deliberate part of the process like say https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962/ https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbel...