Skip to main content

Photorealism

Many people feel honoured when their drawing or painting is mistaken for a photo. Well, sometimes it happens unintentionally. But there are artists who strive for photorealism. They think it's the greatest achievement to be able to make a drawing or painting look like it is a photo, even to be able to literally copy a photo by drawing or painting it.

I don't think so. Nowadays,  if your goal is to depict something as true to reality as possible, you can take a photo and that's it. Easy. So why would you learn to draw or paint, just to make your drawing (or painting) look like a photo? That doesn't make sense to me. I want my drawings to be something different, something more than photos are.

The most important thing about drawing is the fun you have while doing it. But as far as the result is concerned, I want my drawings to have a character of their own, a different character than a photo has. At least, I want them to look like drawings.

With this in mind, drawing from a photo is not such a bad thing, apart from the fact that you can't always draw from life. You already have a photo of your subject, great, but you don't have a drawing of it, yet. What a pity. The interesting task is to make your drawing stand out against the photo. Sounds fun.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Sketchbook Syndrome

This is a phenomenon you often hear about when it comes to drawing in sketchbooks. Sketchbooks are not only a tool these days. They often are a piece of art themselves. People want them to look good. And they especially don't want to start a new sketchbook with a bad page. So there is advice out there about how to overcome this fear of ruining a new sketchbook with a bad first page. One tip is to start somewhere in the middle. If you then ruin your drawing it's at least not on the first page. For me this doesn't work, because I date my drawings and want them to be in chronological order. And then, sooner or later you have to tackle that first page and still don't know if it will turn out good or not. Another tip suggests to use the first page to paint your colour palette or the tools you are going to use or something like this. Well, if this is useful to you, why not. I would simply say, chose a subject that is familiar to you, something you know you are good at. ...
1 comment
more »

Gouache

I have bought some Schmincke Designers Gouache and some Hahnemühle watercolour paper. I need to start practising with the good stuff, because my older niece has asked me to paint something for her 16th birthday in October. So I have done this little painting in my mixed media sketchbook today. The paint is great, so much smoother and easier to handle than the cheap stuff I have used so far. After getting to know it better and practising a bit I will also test the new paper. I‘m looking forward to more painting adventures.
Post a Comment
more »

My style

I have a style. I didn‘t chose it. It just happened. It‘s the result of how I like to work and what I like to work with. First, I sketch out my drawing in pencil. Then I go over the lines with ink. Finally, I colour it with coloured pencils, whereas I don‘t spend many hours on a drawing. My sketchbook has many more pages to be filled. I don‘t know if my style is good in any objective way, but it‘s my style and I like it. It would be great if other people really liked it, but in the end it is what it is. And I do my drawings for myself in the first place. Anyway, if I don‘t overdo them, I think the style of my drawings is somewhere between realistic and illustrative. This is how I like them best and I would love to deliberately persue this more.
Post a Comment
more »