References, are they Good or Bad? | Ep 20
Comments (5)
I'm just an amateur hobbyist, but I really enjoy working from references. 60% of the time, I'm painting from my own landscape photos. I do that for relaxation, to spend more time with that moment/image, and to try to make the picture a little more aesthetically pleasing and expressive. The other 40% of the time, I'm drawing someone's pet for an animal shelter charity auction, or drawing family/friends for a gift, and in those situations I'm actually importing and tracing the reference image in order to get all the proportions right, before rendering and filling everything in. Either way, I don't feel like I have the creativity to work from imagination, and it would become a bit stressful for me, making all of those creative decisions. I would no longer be getting what I want from the process, which is the satisfaction of trying to recreate an image in a way that is faithful in many ways to the original, but still expresses the aesthetics of the artist (me).
I think this is a really good point, often missed - the process, and what you get out of it IS important. Sometimes I find having the pressure to invent a scene takes away the enjoyment of the creation. Learning how to use Procreate (as a user of CSP and PSP), being able to follow tutorials, use references etc was fantastic, letting me focus on the process and all the various tools and tricks!
Maybe it’s because im very into Gothic Horror, but neither of you will ever get complaints from me when you start drawing fall “too early”
Brilliant guidance gents. The epistemology of art. I learnt a lot from you both! So great to hear you both chat about this important topic.
My background is pet portraits and commercial illustration - not using references is simply not an option, no matter how experienced I am in 'what a dog looks like', I can't draw someones dog without using reference images! I'd argue those artists who have their however many hours experience so they needn't use a direct reference, are still indirectly referring, mentally, to all those references they used in the past. If you don't know what an apple looks like, as you've never seen one or even heard it described, you can't draw one! I think theres an art to using references, and a significant difference between straight up copying a single photo, and taking elements from one or many images, and then enhancing that further with your own style/imagination etc. I think the old masters, if they had access to the tools we have today, would have used them to their fullest extent, references, tracing, the lot!