photo referance help or a hindrance??

[the_ultimate_evil]

this is something I've seen get a lot of flack on line. there are some who see people who do it as real artists, where as some admit to using it quite a bit.

now i will admit i have used photo reference for my work in the past, to help with anatomy, layout or posing or to represent someone from real life, it was something i was taught in school though maybe it's is due to my link to photography in my art, i don't know

now i can understand if the piece is simply just copied and nothing is done with it to distinguish it from the source then this is wrong, but recently i've seen a  backlash on any artist who uses photo reference

so what's your opinions

[UnkoMan]

Photo reference gets flack? Really? That's the exact same as just using a live human model. I use it quite a bit. A lot of times I will combine various photo referenced poses, and try to put them together correctly in my head.

In fact, I was taught to use reference as well. Also that you should keep an artist's graveyard. That's a scrapbook of things (or poses) that you think you might have to draw. That way you won't just have to remember how everything in the world looks.

Now photo TRACING, that's a different beast. If you are copying the exact same musculature or, in say a Greg Land case, just tracing over the features... well that's just not drawing. Anybody could do that. Granted, some people can do it better than others, but still.


But, yeah, looking at something and drawing it? Isn't that pretty much what actual artists always used to do? We just don't have to have live people sit around for hours anymore.

[captainspud]

Ehh. I find that most work done from photo reference looks really stiff and awkward, so I try not to use it.

Using photo ref is fine when you're learning (draw from ref over and over, and eventually you won't need it anymore), but I'd never use it for a production piece. Real models can't go into the poses I like to use, and real cameras often can't fit where I like to put them (ie, on the ground in the middle of a fight). It's impossible to perfectly place a subject and camera in the ideal spots for what I do, so I just don't bother.

So, yeah. Use them when you need to, but you'll be a stronger artist if you can move beyond them. IMHO.

[zuludelta]

Photo-referencing, and even lightboxing and tracing, is perfectly fine. They are just illustration techniques after all. Models are useful for figuring out anatomical relations and working around difficult angles. The problem isn't that people rely on these techniques (every working artist, at some point, has had to use them), it's just that in certain instances, the results don't really work in the context that they're used in. Personally, I find an overt reliance on posed models as a tad distracting in a dynamic visual medium such as comic books.

I particularly find it jarring when posed models are used in illustrations/caricatures/cartoons that are meant to convey movement. As 'spud mentioned, the figures just look stiff and awkward most of the time. Posed models are fine when you're drawing a still figure, but when used in a dynamic composition, posed figures look unnaturally stiff. This was something that really bothered me with Alex Ross' early work and is still the biggest problem I have with Greg Land's.

Here's an example to show you what I mean, from Alex Ross' work on Marvels:



Is Cap running? Is he jumping? Is he kicking? Or is he a guy simply posed to look like he's in mid-run/jump/kick?



Since Ross based his Cap on a static model, Cap himself looks very static. It's similar to the difference between a photograph of a guy who's actually running and a photograph of a guy who's posed like he's running. Anybody who pays attention can tell that the latter is staged, while the former is a more accurate representation of dynamic motion caught in a snapshot. I mean really, if photo-realistic, staged, comic book scenes were really so compelling, fumetti/fotoromanzi would have displaced illustrated comics long ago.

The good thing about Ross is that it seems like he's finally realized that many of his painted comics are only a series of pictures of guys, who aren't exactly ideal physical specimens, posing in tight shirts ad tight jeans. When he teamed up with penciller Doug Braithwaite for 2005's Justice maxi-series, the difference was striking (Ross painted over Braithwaite's pencils). Braithwaite's pencils brought energy, dynamism, and clear storytelling that was mostly missing from Ross' panel-to-panel work in Marvels and Kingdom Come.

I mentioned context earlier. When Tim Bradstreet does a Punisher cover using his buddy as the model, I don't really mind. In fact, most of the time, it turns out great. But that's because Bradstreet knows how to compose and stage his scenes in such a way that the posing doesn't look artificial, forced, and stiff. Most of the times, it's because the Punisher is just standing and looking tough. Or sitting and looking tough. Sure, the images looks static, but they're meant to be. The Punisher is meant to be posing and not doing much else.

The moment he tries to imply movement though and the images start looking a bit more contrived and the action a bit ambiguous.

Also, there's big difference between drawing from a model and drawing a stylized icon representation of a model. Most of the time, in superhero comics, what artists are actually trying to do is the latter. What many comic readers respond positively to is that shorthand for the idealized human form that is the caricature or the cartoon. Long-time Marvel/DC penciller Bret Blevins did an excellent column on the difference in an early issue of Draw! magazine a few years back... here's a small sample of what he means:

Click for the image (artful nudity warning!)   

In comics, cartoons, and caricaturing, the objective isn't to recreate the naturalistic model. It isn't the cartoonist's/caricaturist's/comic book artist's main goal to make portraiture The primary goal, in most cases, is to simplify the subject to a certain extent (and sometimes exaggerate the subject's features) in a way that facilitates expression and reproducibility (and by extension, storytelling). The goal of comics art, for the most part isn't about strict naturalistic/realistic verisimilitude.

[daglob]

The thing is, comic books are all about exaggertion: exaggerated perspective, exaggerated anatomy, exaggerated action, exaggerated angles, exaggerated expressions... We comic readers are used to this exaggeration and "read" it as "normal" for a comic book. Ross is good, but he could stand to exaggerate stuff just a little, otherwise, his work does look little stiff and stagey.

Still, if he didn't exaggerate, he would remain an excellent artist. Despite what some people think, it is not a crime to be someone other than Jack Kriby.

The guy who drew the Original Doom Patrol, Bruno Premani, didn't exaggerate nearly enough.I thnk, though, that this fit the book he was working on, making the off-the-wall adventures and villains more... well, realistic than if someone like Gil Kane, Gene Colan, Neal Adams or Jack Kriby did the art.

Wally Wood is supposed to have had filing cabinets FULL of photo references. I'd love to have seen it...

[JKCarrier]

Wally Wood is supposed to have had filing cabinets FULL of photo references. I'd love to have seen it...

That certainly goes along with his famous motto: "Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up".  :lol:

[daglob]

Wally Wood is supposed to have had filing cabinets FULL of photo references. I'd love to have seen it...

That certainly goes along with his famous motto: "Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up".  :lol:

Words to live by. Me, I've found that the internet is a useful tool when looking for photo reference.

[Mr. Hamrick]

I think that it's perfectly acceptable to use photo references for certain things. 

With locations and background for the characters, for example.  If you are trying to draw Spidey swinging through New York then its a cop-out to just make a few "generic tall buildings" for him to be swinging off of.   The same goes for deciding on architectural choices for a city of your own design.  Photos of existing architectural styles are a great supplement to ones existing knowledge. 

How light hits a subject in certain conditions can also be examined better via looking at photographic resources.  Anatomical reasons have already been mentioned here.  Again it is purely how you use the content and why you are using it to begin with.

In the end, it's a matter of how much realism and kind of quality you are striving for in your work.