{"id":1672,"date":"2017-12-28T23:30:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-29T07:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/?p=1672"},"modified":"2019-09-15T18:34:16","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T01:34:16","slug":"painting-from-photographs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/28\/painting-from-photographs\/","title":{"rendered":"Painting from Photographs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Painting
Begun on location, I utilized both of these photos to finish my \u201cWawona Covered Bridge\u201d painting in the studio. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

I just ended my fall 10 week “Painting Tune-Up” workshops with a discussion about painting from photographs. It would be great to always paint from life, that remains my goal and should be yours, but there are always situations when working from a photograph is the best or even the only solution. With that in mind, I thought I’d discuss the pitfalls to watch out for and some techniques for getting the most out of working from photos.<\/p>\n

Painting from photographs gets a bad rap. It’s always better to work from life (I’ll discuss why later in this post), but in certain situations a photograph is the only way to access a subject. Here are some situations when photography offers a solution:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Painting postumous portraits
\u2022 Insufficient time to finish a painting on location
\u2022 Freezing quickly moving subjects in motion
\u2022 Locations offering no place to set up an easel
\u2022 Limited physical mobility
\u2022 Capturing a record of your subject, as insurance, for future emergency use
\u2022 Documentation of subjects you want to return to, when time allows
\u2022 Capturing intricate subject details for later reference
\u2022 Getting your painting on a computer for non-destructive experiments<\/p>\n

Photographs can be a wonderful aid for artists, but they do present some inherent problems for which we need to compensate. A photograph is a technical recording of a live subject. It can’t capture the physical or emotional feeling<\/em> presented by a subject or location that being there can.<\/p>\n

A painting from life is a direct personal interpretation of all the 3 dimensional information presented by the subject. A photograph is a pre-flattened 2 dimensional recording of a 3 dimensional subject. It’s missing all the 3 dimensional information.<\/p>\n

Even today’s latest cameras can only capture a subset of the full color and value spectrums present in a subject. The lighter areas in photos tend to be blown out (over-exposed) and the darker areas darker than the original subject (masking detail in the shadows).<\/p>\n

Because a camera evenly<\/em> records all attributes of the subject before it, painting exclusively from photographs can lead to over detailing, no distinction of detail in the focal area from the rest of the painting.<\/p>\n

Cameras also inject their lens distortions into photographs, exaggerating foreshortening and distorting perspective towards the edges of the image. You need to be aware and compensate for these inaccuracies, when painting from photographs.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Photo
Example of \u201cbracketing\u201d your photographs with multiple exposure, \u00a9 2017 Blaize. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Here are a few good practices to overcome the problems and limitations in photography, discussed above.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Begin your paintings from life, whenever possible, even when you know the majority of  work will be done in the studio from reference photographs.<\/li>\n
  2. Shoot your reference photos a bit wider than the composition on your canvas. You’ll often find, during the painting process, that you want to bring elements along the edges further into frame.<\/li>\n
  3. Bracket<\/em> your reference shots. Bracketing is a term to describe the practice of taking multiple shots of your subject at different exposure settings, from slightly over-exposed, through correct exposure, to slightly under-exposed. Most cameras and smart phones today have a bracketing setting to automate this process.<\/li>\n
  4. Examine your subject, through the camera’s viewfinder, for the following: details that require dedicated shots, light areas that will likely over-expose or wash out, dark areas that will under-expose, losing color and details. Compensate for these losses by making mental and physical color notes.<\/li>\n
  5. Paint a color key thumbnail or add patches of the correct colors in unfinished areas of your painting, while on location.<\/li>\n
  6. Avoid working from photographs shot by others. You have no relationship to the live subject in these.<\/li>\n
  7. Paint from the photos you’ve taken A.S.A.P. while the actual location is still fresh in your memory.<\/li>\n
  8. Simplify areas of unnecessary detail present in the photo<\/li>\n
  9. Correct lens distortions present in the photos<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We all must work from photos at one time or another. Remaining aware of photo limitations and compensating for their flaws assures a successful outcome in the painting from photographs process!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I just ended my fall 10 week “Painting Tune-Up” workshops with a discussion about painting from photographs. It would be great to always paint from life, that remains my goal and should be yours, but there are always situations when working from a photograph is the best or even the only solution. With that in … Continue reading “Painting from Photographs”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[4,143,70,8,142],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1672"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2082,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672\/revisions\/2082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}