The Big Fat Ref Argument

[waronmars]

SO we are/were debating on irc about the use of refs. I for one advocate using refs, even to the point of copying them totally in order to understand how to get something to look a certain way, what combinations of light and shadow make this look like a nose etc. occasionally. I do recommend to many many newbies to use references in their learning, and i always have and will continue to use references as a learning tool. I know many pros use references for their art, but some people must see this done poorly and be put off the process entirely

The rebuttal to this seems to be
-Using refs is lazy
-i dont want to draw anything that already exists
-i look at people, so i dont need to use refs.
-i cant use refs, i try, they just mess my drawings up
-it annoys me is when you see someone do heaps of studies but not put those studies into makeing a decent creative piece
-a real artist does it from their own mind
- i dont see the point of drawing something 'realistically', theres no point if you can take a photo.

I'd like to hear everyones take on this situation.

[derelic7]

Like I said on IRC, I believe you need some sort of reference, if not, a whole lot of studying so you've got some knowledge in that noggin'.

The brain cannot construct something out of nothing, it doesn't work that way. Creativity is using previously acquired material in new ways and/or combining it with other material. Or, like Einstein said, "Creativity is the art of hiding the source".

I've started painting from refs just to learn things like painting the human body etc, light, I'm learning a shitload and it looks a ton better than my crap from imagination. But I think as you evolve as an artist, as for myself I'm just a beginner, you have a whole lot of experience and can create things completely from imagination because you truly KNOW what they look like.

[karma militia]

well if you look at a drawing/picture for long enough, i think it is possible to extract most of the information of how to recreate it (lightsources/colours/textures etc.) without going through all the hassle of copying it. also, exercising lateral thought and imagination in all aspects of your drawing can be good for you, in my opinion.

personally i find that refs distract me from my original idea, and its too easy to end up with an image that looks like an amalgamation of several others.

i'm not saying using refs is pointless, but i think their effectiveness varies depending on the style/technique of individual illustrators.

[figure2]

I for one advocate using refs, even to the point of copying them totally in order to understand how to get something to look a certain wayWhile I know there are people in the world with photographic memories and can recall things they have seen in the past with vivid detail, most of us can't keep all of that information in our heads for immediate recall.

The context also matters in this discussion. Many storyboard artists work without reference because their sketches are more about direction & concept. For more finished work, if you want your subject & backgrounds to look right, you need to look at something to guide you.

As far as copying images directly, you need to be careful. Many publications like Time, National Geographic and others take a dim view on unauthorized copying of their copyrighted photos and will come after you with lawyers. You need to be smart on how you use your reference.

[Fififi]

IMHO what is important is that the artist makes an attempt to learn from refs when they use them. I have a goal of one day having an understanding of anatomy solid enough to produce work as convincing without reference as with it.

I don't think it's lazy at ALL, in fact the opposite if the alternative is, say, covering a difficult hand in a sleeve, or drawing a crappy rubber limb without muscles, tendons, tension, etc - this is being too lazy to try and learn, and perhaps sacrificing the quality of your work.

Copying a photo exactly is fine if you're only studying from it. Just plain ol' stealing if you're not gonna change/add a lot to it, and you publish it as a creative artwork.

If people can find appropriate models, bonus! Lucky them :) You can get exact poses, and I find it's easier to understand an object than an photo of an object. I think a model (or a mirror) merely an improved kinda reference.

Drawing objects that exist is vital if you want to create anything convincing. Come on, everyone outside of Elfwood knows this! I don't know why you even included that one, it's just retarded! ...Actually so is 'A real artist does it from their own mind', and the last point on your list. Nobody worth their salt believes that bollocks, right?

I'm guessing they weren't exactly the most accomplished, skilled or advanced artists making these points?

[Ilaekae]

Destroying an old joke for a point...

Drunk falls in a hole, bringing the protective wood fence and a box of workman's tools in with him. After yelling for help, a priest hears him and comes over.

"What are you doing down there, my son?"

"Lookin' for a way out, yer emminence, sir..."

"Well, why don't you construct a ladder from that there wood and the tools and climb out, Boyo?"

'Wit all done respects, Faddah, what's a ladder?"

"Two sticks with steps you can climb up on. Are you tellin' me you don't know what a ladder looks like?"

"Why should I!?! I'm fuckin' scared o'heights!"

[Dougbot]

All the greats use reference. It's important. Is it always needed, no, but most of those reasons at the top of this thread are ridiculous.

I honestly don't use them enough. I've heard this all before, usually by students and wannabe's. Struzan usually won't even take a job unless he has a photo he can project. Does it make his work any less? No. Mullins sometimes grabs lighting reference from screenshots. Is his work any less amazing? No. Dusso, Church, Clyne, all have some sort of reference at some point in there work.

They're not going to say, 'oh this would be easier if I had a picture of gray clouds to use for reference, but that would be lazy.' They're going to say, 'this photo is exactly what I'm looking for (copy paste sounds are now heard)'.

Bottom line, use whatever it takes to get the job done.

[Groover McNab]

There was an argument? That's just silly. Refs are good, use em.

[Bowlin]

I had a similar type of arguement awhile back, I was trying to call Art Myths. (http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=31321&highlight=Bowlin) CrazyHarij post just shocked me, cause it's exactly the same thing i always say, "you can't get something from nothing". I guess another way to look at it is, you have to take real visual elements and exaggerate or combine them to make a new conceptual idea.


I think the reason people believe that artist are suppose to just draw out of their own mind like it's magic, is simply because of the myths of what an "artist" is suppose to be. I think it's just a cultural outlook toward artist. "Starving artist", is another one I think that came about because fine artist would make paintings that the general public (or anyone else for that matter) could not understand or be able to appreciate. There was no supply and demand for that type of art. And then there are myths that even art teachers teach you in art school or collage. Such as art teachers often have students do gesture drawings to help them "warm up" for the detailed drawings, when this is not how gesture drawings is suppose to be used at all... (I think it was Mentler that had pointed this out in another thread. Hmmmm... can't find the link. He said that gesture drawings were invented in the drawing book, "the natural way to draw", which is an exercise within itself, not a "warm up")

My point is, that it's hard for us ametuers to really understand the drawing/painting process because there really is many different ways you can approach it. The hard part is trying to learn the process while at the same time weeding through the art myths and figuring out what is true and appropriate.

I agree with dougbot. If I'm argueing with someone about using photoreference, or copying other paintings or illustration as a means to learning how to draw and paint, I'd simply give them names of professional artist that have given me the same advice. For instance, Todd Lockwood (http://www.toddlockwood.com/) told me he learned to paint from copying his favorite artists.

The hard part for me is argueing this with friends that aren't into drawing and have their own ideas. Like you either born to know how to draw or you weren't. It can get to the point that no matter how well, how professional your skill level becomes, they refuse to believe that you "really" know how to draw. A lot of people will believe only what they want to believe even when the truth is right in their face.

[poise]

Yeah waronmars! I do agree with you about ref. And it seems most people here do to. Ref material is used as a guide and learning materials. I have made many mistakes in the past when I was learning how to draw to just copy without understanding the structure of what I was drawing. So I never learned what i was doing untill I realized just copying doesn't cut it and won't stay, thinking about the drawing is how you learn. I use ref. now to bring my creative ideas to a sound reality. If I don't understand a certain shape and how it's made, I look at life. having your subconciense(your creative side) and your technical side come together is what makes your image come to life. Every artist does it differently though we all have to find what works best for us. :)

[Zaknafain]

References are great. Its important to know how to use them. If you know how to use them, you will learn a lot while painting from refference and you will create a piece different from the refference.
I use reference for anatomy. I know most of the muscles of the body by heart and to get the proportions right isn't that difficult for me but I still paint a lot with refference because I learn a lot from every piece and because the result is much more alive.

[K-17]

as long as the cops can't get you for it, i don't see the problem

[theincredibleandy]

I like how Carlos Huante put it: "If you can't draw from your imagination, you're useless to me." He said you need to be constantly observing and studying to learn the kinds of shapes and rhythms that show up in nature. I think that's important for just about any artist.

That said, I think you're just being dumb if you're commissioned to do a historically-based piece and you don't use reference to get your details right. Reference is only limiting when you stop designing and start copying. As long as you understand what's going on in your reference and you know how to deviate from it, I say use as much as you want.

[JokingClown]

I think theincredibleandy put it extremely well there.

[JERI]

SO we are/were debating on irc about the use of refs. I for one advocate using refs, even to the point of copying them totally in order to understand how to get something to look a certain way, what combinations of light and shadow make this look like a nose etc. occasionally. I do recommend to many many newbies to use references in their learning, and i always have and will continue to use references as a learning tool. I know many pros use references for their art, but some people must see this done poorly and be put off the process entirely

The rebuttal to this seems to be
-Using refs is lazy
-i dont want to draw anything that already exists
-i look at people, so i dont need to use refs.
-i cant use refs, i try, they just mess my drawings up
-it annoys me is when you see someone do heaps of studies but not put those studies into makeing a decent creative piece
-a real artist does it from their own mind
- i dont see the point of drawing something 'realistically', theres no point if you can take a photo.

I'd like to hear everyones take on this situation.

Don't understand why there need to be an argument on this, of course you should use ref in the learning process.

I thought you would skip ref because you're lazy, that's the problem with me most of the time.

[liam.c]

every thing comes from some place

if learning is the goal then what ever approch works for you is the best , if puting a rubber chicken on your head running down 9th street on your hands singing walking after midnight helps you learn then do it

if makeing cash is the thing then make the cash use waht ever works

if it works for waht you want there isent even a question .debate professorial talk games of socal postion only take away from the time you would have to paint and draw .

[s.ketch]

The brain cannot construct something out of nothing, it doesn't work that way.

What about those dreams where youre like 'WTF?!' cause you were just on another planet or some kind of weird place that youve never seen before. And that were really detailed.

[madster]

Jack Vettriano (see prints of his stuff here (http://www.fulcrumgallery.com/artist_jackvettriano.aspx?source=GoogleAdWords&ad=JACKVETTRIANO)) is a VERY successful artist, who is self-taught, and has always readily admitted to basing his works on the reference pictures of a style guide. He is "accused" of "copying," (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4305438.stm) but says he's never copied, just used the ref. pics for ideas...

Whatever tool you can use to do the job is just that. A tool. It's how you USE it, that makes it art...

~M

[jfwalls]

It's funny how if you use a model or go outside and paint what you see nobody bothers you. However, if you use a photograph of something, people aren't as accepting. I personally have no problem with using any reference at all. I'm not even bothered by people who do paint-overs (as long as its their own photos). I think as long as the client is happy and the work looks good then the job has been done.

[lavhoes]

There is no "not using reference." At all. Ever. You're either using it with your eyes or using it with your memory, maybe sometimes combining both at the same time. At no point, however, are you never recollecting something you've seen earlier or gaining information from something you're looking at right now.

If I told you to draw a cylinder right now, you'd be able to do it. Why? Because you've seen a cylinder; you've probably seen a cylinder several times nearly every day of your life. Easy to do. If I told you to draw the west wing of St. Michael's, well, you'd be screwed, because most likely you've never seen it. If I told you to draw what you think the west wing of St. Michael's looks like, you'd probably think of cylindrical columns, glass windows, long hallways, pews, etc. and then draw all that in a church-like fashion because at some point you've seen a church somewhere so you have the basic gist of what a church would look like. You're referencing your mental picture of a church and, from that, construing your own idea of what this church might look like.

As artists (especially conceptual ones), that's the sort of work we do. We don't get hired to draw a grasshopper or a bear; we get hired to invent new creatures based on the general structure and features of creatures we're already familiar with. If I was hired to create a race of insects, I would think back to reference all the studies I did of spiders, flies, mosquitoes, etc. and use that knowledge to aid me. And if I haven't done those studies, then I would get photographs and look at those for reference. Either way, I rely on the existence of something and the knowledge of its structure to help me.

Personally, when I'm sketching I try to rely on my own memories of studies; it's fast sketches and it'd take too much time to look up a bunch of details when I should already be doing studies consistently and building up the knowledge database in my head. I should know how to pose a figure and the anatomy of eyeballs and so forth, so at some level I should be independent from physical reference for drawing some things. It's only when I decide to get into more detail that I pull up photographs, just to get all the little things that memory can't store. Buttons on Civil War era uniforms, the inner workings of sniper rifles, stuff like that. That kind of thing requires physical reference.

But, again, no matter what, I have to have used reference somewhere, either now because I don't know what it looks like, or in the past when I wanted to know what it looked like so I drew it a million times until I had intimate knowlege of it locked away in my brain. Either way, I had to look at something at some point, so I might as well not cripple myself by completely forgoing physical reference at all ever, because that would force me to rely on what I've studied so far, and I don't think there's a man alive who could live long enough to memorize every facet of every thing that has ever existed.

I'll take my shitty memory and my library of photographs, thank you very much.

[BlackGuy]

some of what I'm saying I got from Ian McCaig's DVD and I completely agree with it. If you're doing a piece of concept art, do lots and lots of ref studies relating to your subject. For example if you're creating some kind of sea monster, do tons of fish studies, and studies of all types of underwater life. If you're designing a futuristic soldier, do some studies of soldiers from the present and the past. Once you've done that, then you go back on what you've learned and do your concept and your painting from your imagination. That is how I feel it should be done. Now if you need some reference on a particular part, like let's say you want to design a boot very similar to the kind that navy seals wear or something, go for it. But if you need some help with a pose or something, and you happen to find a photo with the pose you need. I'd say do a bunch of gesture and contour sketches of the pose (fast ones, since obviously you probably have a deadline), and then try to duplicate it from your imagination. It doesn't take a whole lot of time to do it and it will benefit you in the future. If you're doing professional work, then you're most likely good enough to be able to learn such things quickly. But again, reference for some kind of detail is no problem IMO.

[darth massacre]

I say let those who want to argue about it argue.

You can't draw a spade if you don't know how a spade looks like.