Truth or fiction: Drawing & Painting from Life vs Photos

 Photography can be a funny thing.  You can select different cameras and different lenses with different focal lengths, totally flattening or curving space and altering perspective. You can adjust how much or little of your image is in focus.  You can adjust color balance.  And that's just when you are taking the picture!  Then there's editing... Consider, for example, my photo above.  The only editing done after-the-fact was cropping it and flipping it upside down for hopefully a surreal effect. 

So when you draw or paint from a photograph, attempting to make something look 'real', what are you really getting?  It very much depends on all the choices made by the photographer.  I'll admit, that while I'm a big fan of working from direct observation, I recognize that sometimes it is not convenient.  And my painting style does not aim at photo-realism, anyhow.  I prefer to capture the spirit and energy of my subject (I hope).  I'm sharing the paintings below, all mine, all done from photos for various reasons, to help me make a point a little later in this post.

The image above is of my son when he was in college, painted at least 6 years ago, and is acrylic  on canvas and incorporates collage (bits of colored glass, odd little toys and doodads, string and yarn, and a bass guitar string on the frame).  I used the collage to help capture the spirit of my son.

And below is a painting I did several years ago, from a photo I took while scuba diving when I was young and single.  It also acrylic, on Masonite, with a shell and coral collage on the frame.  I don't think I have to explain why I worked from a photo.

This oil painting on canvas below, done decades ago, is of a scene that I regularly saw while on a toll highway, especially during drives too and from my college town.  One day, with a blustery sky, traffic was light so I pulled over and took a quick photo.  Again, there was no way to paint the scene live.  One little photo was all I had to work from.

The acrylic painting of flowers below actually began from observation, but as the flowers were quickly fading, and I wasn't done, I took photos to help me complete the painting. 

But I've been thinking more about observational work lately, and I'll tell more about why this is on my mind in my next blog post, in a few days.  But meanwhile, I've talked before on this blog about drawing from observation, in particular here.  And I want to dwell on why I think it is such an important thing to teach.

Below are two photos taken from exactly the same location, totally unedited.  Two different cameras, two different focal length lenses.  Which one is "right"? Both?  Or neither?

Let's say you wanted to draw/paint this location in the two photos above this paragraph, or the two photos below, also shot with two different cameras/focal lengths.  How would you approach it?  Do you take a photo and bring it back to your studio to put on canvas or paper?  But which image do you select?  Which is the "right" one?  If you set up an easel on the dock above, or the walkway/bridge below, and drew what you saw, what would it look like?  The first photo or the second?  Or perhaps neither of them.  Personally, in the top pair, I prefer the more dramatic perspective of the first photo.  I'm not so sure about the pair below. If I drew the dramatic perspective of the left-hand photo, I'd be concerned that it might look as thought the bridge walkway was tilting, because of the sharp angle of the shadow lines. 

 Certainly, if I want to do drawings or paintings of these locations, and am unable to draw or paint on location, I can take photos and choose what I prefer to use for my composition.  But what if you are using a photo someone else took?  Then, hasn't the photographer made the aesthetic decision about how to view the scene? And if you are trying to make it look "real", what does that even mean??  Which one of the photos in the pairs is the way it "really" looked?

Or maybe you've got a drawing just the way you want it, but you are in your studio trying to recall the colors of the scene you are painting.  Below are two different photos, taken from exactly the same location, with the same camera, but a different color balance setting.  Which one is "right"?  Which one would you use for reference for your painting?  Since I took these photos just a couple of days ago, I can tell you, neither one is a good representation of the colors I saw in the water that day.  How better to get it right than to paint it while actually looking at it?  So that the colors you perceive with your personal vision influence what you choose to put on your canvas or paper?

Here's another pair of pics, taken within seconds of each other, with two different camera settings.  Which picture represents what it really looked like that evening?  It was a pretty sunset, but again, neither one of these photos is a true representation.  Of course if I tried to set up my easel outside and paint what I saw, there would be two problems: first of all, the light was diminishing quickly, so it would have been a challenge to see what I was doing without falling off the dock into the lake.  Second, the color was incredibly fleeting.  Five minutes later it was dramatically different, and ten minutes later it was gone completely.  So I would have to add my personal interpretation, since, light and color change so rapidly.  Case in point would obviously be paintings by Monet, of a cathedral, or a haystack, for example, where he returned and painted the same scene many times with different light quality. 

Look at the incredible color of that sky in these images below!  Do you think this is real?  I took both these photos, so I can answer the question.  The photo is not edited, but still, the answer is NO.  I used a polarizing filter on my camera lens, which, when used appropriately, will substantially darken a sky, and cause white clouds, for example, to dramatically stand out.  (It will also remove glare from water or elsewhere.)  So would it be wrong to paint the sky this fabulous blue?  Of course not!  It is your artistic CHOICE.  But to paint the sky that color simply BECAUSE THAT IS THE COLOR IN THE PHOTO is just blindly copying, not creative decision-making.

In recent years, as I've looked at exhibited drawings and paintings by high school students, it seems there is a lot of skill, beyond what I was ever trained to do: the kids have learned to copy, to render, to carefully shade, and their work is often impeccable, and photographic in detail.  But what I have missed is the spirit that shows me who the artist is inside.  Many of these carefully rendered works of art seem to have the life sucked right out of them.  I would like to see the energy of a Kandinsky, the joy of a Matisse, the whimsy of a Miro, the emotional warmth of a Cassatt, the inner glow of a Rembrandt, the sense of inner light of a Vermeer, the mystery of a Di Chirico, the quiet of a Hopper, the angst of... the humor of.... the anger of.... (You fill in the blanks; I could go on and on.)

It's been 30 years since I was a high school art teacher, and I realize the world has changed.  But, when I walk through a major museum like the Art Institute of Chicago, or the Brooklyn Museum, or MoMA, or the Met, or even a tiny museum like our local gem The Hyde Collection, I am still most moved by those works of art that have a sense of the spirit of the artist.  I am not moved by a technically perfect piece that has no soul, no emotional connection, that is nothing more than an impeccable copy of someone's photograph.  (I think that's why I love elementary art students - because they have not yet un-learned the joy of creating.)

I think we can never re-claim that spirit, that joy, unless we STOP depending on using other people's photographs for the primary source material for our art.  Our kids need to look up from their screens and start to really look and SEE what is in the world around them.  If you are teaching kids of any age, set up still life arrangements to work from, have students take turns as models, take your classes on mini field trips outside to draw, give them mirrors to draw themselves, have them, as my college drawing teacher assigned for us, do endless drawings of their hands.  (Actually, the specific instruction was "endless articulating cube studies of your hands", but I digress.)  Have them do blind contour drawings of all sorts of organic objects.  Bring in taxidermy animals for drawing source material.  Have them look at and draw their feet. Borrow the human skeleton from the science department of your school to be a model, put a hat or scarf or sunglasses on it; pose it.  Have students open a random drawer or cabinet and draw the contents; have them pick flowers and examine them prior to drawing them.  Have them draw spontaneously with a felt tip marker or ball point pen or even a crayon.   If they MUST work from a photo for reasons like the ones I had for my paintings above, don't constantly resort to having them graph the photo to get it "perfect".  (It is a good skill to learn, but remember, it is just a skill.)  Instead,  ask that they use the photos as a reference, a starting point, for creating a piece of art that reflects the artist inside.  This is my challenge to you all!

It is my hope that 50 or 100 years from now, when the next generations step into an art museum, that they see works created today that express the humanity of the artist, and that move them the way we are moved by, perhaps, that Picasso, or O'Keeffe, or van Gogh, or Klimt......  rather than seeing technically perfect pieces that lack a soul, and that fail to elicit any emotion from the observer.

Thanks for reading this massive post!  I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Observational Drawing and the Creative License

Observational drawing is one of my absolute favorite things to do with young kids, because they totally buy into it.  The drawing above was done in a 1st grade class.  The students pulled the name of a classmate from a bucket.  The partners sat across from each other, and after some demo and instruction, they carefully drew their partner.  (Hence the 'of' and 'by' on this fabulous pic of Isabella.)  At this age, nobody has convinced these kids that they can't do it, so it never occurs to them!  With a few parameters set (such as 'no boogers'), these kids look intently at each other, draw, and then work hard to match colors of hair and skin.    I'll show you some more 1st grade portraits later  in this post.
By the way - this is a long post.  I hope you'll stick with me!!!

 Oftentimes, I would set up a large still life in my classroom.  I've used everything from toys and weird little doo-dads (mostly stuff I bought for a quarter at yard sales), glassware filled with water and colored scarves, the skeleton from the science room (dressed with hats and jewelry), house plants, and more.  I've used boxes to create levels, and draped fabrics over them to create interesting negative space.  The paintings above and below are by 4th graders.  We were learning about my favorite artist, Matisse.  

 Students were given drawing boards if they wanted, furniture was moved, and students picked a location to draw.  (The still life was 'in the round'.)  Students used viewfinders to help pick an area of the still life that would become an interesting composition (of course we had discussed what this means.) 

To help them use the viewfinders, kids were told to 'squint like a pirate'.  And they were told they were now old enough to earn their Creative License. 

What's that, you ask?  Well, the Creative License (sorry, no pic of it available right now) grants the licensee permission to make changes in the still life (on their paper, that is; they could NOT go and physically move something on the still life setup!) for the benefit of their composition.  I actually printed up and laminated licenses that could fit in a wallet.  The funniest was the day that a boy came in to my room in a panic - "Mrs. Brown!  I left my License at home!  How am I going to work on my project?!?"  I assured him that, since I had granted him the license, I knew he possessed one!   

 Students could also use their Creative License when making decisions about simplifying what they saw, and when making decisions about pattern and color.  Again, they were to choose colors that enhanced their compositions.  I hope you agree that these tempera still life paintings are as beautiful as I think they are!  By the way, they are painted on 18"x 24" paper, with an approximately 1" white border on the paper.  You can see a prior blog post about them here. 

  

 My 2nd graders used the same still life as inspiration for painting/collages that focused on the goldfish bowl.  By the way, the goldfish in the still life were made from colored foam, and were in a bowl lined with blue cellophane.  The flowers were fake (from the dollar store), because I wanted them to last for a while.  Some of their pics are below.  You can see a few more of the  finished pieces in a post here, from October 2010.

We read the book 'Ish'.  We decided to make our goldfish bowl paintings 'still life-ish'.  I let them  interpret what they saw rather liberally.  They also were learning about Matisse, of course.

 

 As I said at the beginning of the post, I love observational work with young kids.  Each spring I brought in branches of lilacs from my backyard, and put them in vases on each table.  Q-tips were used to paint the flowers, after we closely examined the shapes of the flowers, the shapes of the leaves, the vases, etc.  Each piece is unique, based on the student interpretation of what they saw.   You'll see a couple more of these later in the  post.  I'm having trouble moving the pics where I want them tonight!

 Just for fun, an observational painting I did 2 or 3  years ago.  I had received these flowers after a minor surgery.

Now back to portraits: My 3rd graders did self-portraits while looking in mirrors.  The boy on the right below is a sweetie pie with a permanent scowl  He captured it to perfection! 

The drawings were done to a size that would fit tagboard hand mirrors the kids created.  But they had to paint them first, and cut them out, so we could create the mirror illusion.  They carefully mixed their own skin and hair tones. The drawings were glued to metallic silver contact paper, which was adhered to the mirror. 

 By the time those students were in 3rd grade, they'd already gotten used to observational drawing.  In first grade, we had done this: 

 Every 1st grader got a turn to be a model for a minute or two, while their classmates drew.  We paid close attention to where our bodies bend (elbows, knees, hips, and so on), which direction they slanted, and so on.  We drew with skinny markers so their was no opportunity to erase!

 And then, of course, those portraits with partners:

 The problem, of course, is this: who keeps the drawing?  The artist or the model?  So I solved the problem the following year using mirrors for self-portraits.  They were cut out and glued on wallpaper, which really looked terrific!  Here's a few.  Again, this is 1st grade work:

 Kids had to look  thoughtfully for crayon colors that would match their skin and hair.  I showed them how the pressure on the crayon changed the value of the color, and also how they could mix two crayons together to get the color they wanted.  The girl with the red hair in buns (above) realized red hair is not necessarily RED. 

 Every year, I introduced my 5th graders to blind contour drawing.  (Sorry, no pics to show you.  I promised them it was an exercise, and not to worry how they looked!)  We drew hands, and shoes.  Then I would allow them to look and we'd do more contours, including goodies from my box of toys and doodads.  I put a pile of objects on each table, and after they drew they were allowed to trade with another table. 

One year, with a new deaf student in our little school, the kids all did sign language drawings of their initials.  It seemed like a good idea when I demonstrated, but I had forgotten that while I'm a leftie and could therefore model the letter with my right hand as I drew with my left, most of the kids were right-handed and could not be their own models.  We muddled through it somehow, though, and I still liked the results.

 When I first began in my school district, my classrooms (I taught in a a K-4 building in one village, and a 5-8 building in another town) both were near exit doors.  I brought the primary students outside to draw the magnificent tree in the front yard.  I brought the middle school students out to the hill outside my window, where we went on a 12" hike.  Each student had a 12" square viewfinder that they placed on the ground.  They studied what was in their square and drew what they saw.  Sorry, I have no photos from these early days.

When my district consolidated into one building, my classroom was on the 2nd floor, a very long walk from the door.  It was no longer practical to take the class outside during a class period.  So I brought the outside in.  The sunflowers were planted (at my request) in the school garden.  I had to sneak out a window on the first floor to get the flowers!  Luckily, the teacher whose window I used was very cooperative!  

  On this particular occasion, 4th graders were given assorted colors of tempera and no instruction other than the stipulation that the negative space be filled.  I love this painting above!

First graders (below) were given crayons and liquid watercolor.

 Oh!  Some more lilacs!

 And kindergarten pussywillows.  We examined them closely, touched them, drew the branches and seed pods with crayon, and painted the fuzzy blooms with fingerprints. 

 A 3rd grade still life of musical instruments was interpreted liberally for this painting below.  Incorporating the CD into the artwork was a fun challenge for the kids!

 One of my favorite observational lessons came when my students were learning about Audubon.  All his work was done by observation of the carefully posed birds that had been stuffed.  I was lucky to find a parent who was a taxidermist.  He loaned my classroom a gray fox (beautiful), a fisher (terrifying)  and a pheasant.  The students at all grade levels were totally engaged and drew and painted magnificently.  And somehow, in the excitement of the two weeks that those animals lived in my room, I forgot to take a single photo.  But here's what they would have looked like if I had:

 This fisher below looks much gentler than the one in my room, which had his teeth bared and a glaring menacing look in his eyes.  Everyone loved drawing these animals! 

 Why have I spent SO much time tonight writing this post?  Because I think that sometimes well-meaning art educators get caught up in the attraction of the art projects they see on Pinterest, and forget that we can do so much for our students just by encouraging them to use their powers of observation. Working with them as they figure out how to interpret what they see on their papers is a powerful thing, and will give them something that has more of a lasting benefit than having everyone follow a directed drawing lesson.

Don't get me wrong;  I'm not telling you never to do directed drawing.  I do it sometimes too.  But don't forget that that is just one skill.

 And observation can come in handy for more than just drawing/painting.  When my 6th graders built plaster bandage sculptures of people in motion, I had them repeatedly model for each other to capture the tilt of shoulders, the angle of hips, The stretch of a leg, and so on.  I think it's what made the finished products so spectacular!

By the way - yes, I have taught my older students to enlarge a photo by means of a grid, and it certainly serves a purpose in an intelligent art curriculum.  But it is again just one skill, and shouldn't replace observational drawing, which will give students so much more.   This painting below by a high school student in my district, based on the work of Chuck Close, was done with the grid method. 

 But still, there's something to be learned from observation that you don't find when using a grid.  This is a painting on cardboard I did many years ago, while working with a group of 9th grade students on observational self-portraits.  I love it for its many flaws. 

Now, before I go - one last thing.  Every photo in this post has appeared elsewhere in this blog during the last 4 or 5 years.  If you want to find more about any of them, use the labels at the bottom of the blog, or use the search bar on the right.  You'll find labels for still life, portraits, and more, or type whatever you want into the search bar to find it!