Ask the Art Professor: When and how you should use photo references to draw?
Welcome to “Ask the Art Professor“! Essentially an advice column for visual artists, this is your chance to ask me your questions about being an artist, the creative process, career advice, a technical question about a material, etc. Anything from the smallest technical question to the large and philosophical is welcome. I’ll do my best to provide a thorough, comprehensive answer to your question. Submit your question by emailing me at clara(at)claralieu.com, or by posting here on this blog. All questions will be posted anonymously. Read an archive of past articles here.
Here’s today’s question:
“When and how you should use photo references to draw?”
Too often I find that people use photo references out of laziness. Be careful that if you decide to work with photo references, that it’s for a very specific reason, not because of convenience. Photographs should only be used when direct observation of a subject is impossible. For a still life drawing, get the actual objects and set them so you can directly observe them from life. If you are drawing a self-portrait, it’s easy enough to get a large mirror and draw from that. Anything that you can possibly observe from life should be done in this way. Nothing can substitute experiencing a subject in real life: being able to touch it, smell it, walk around it, inspect it, etc. Staunchly set direct observation as your number one priority.
I’ve also seen many professional artists work with a variety of other references that are just as effective, if not more, than photo references. Artist James Gurney fabricates sculptures of dinosaurs for his paintings. After sculpting the dinosaur in clay, he paints the sculpture and then draws from the sculpture as his reference. You can watch him go through this process in this terrific video below. It goes to show that photographs are not the only option, and that other methods can provide a level of depth and understanding of a subject that photographs are incapable of providing.
Artist James Gurney on how he paints dinosaurs
If you’ve decided that photographs are indeed the only option for your drawing, the next stage is to do everything in your power to shoot the photographs yourself. If that means taking a trip to the zoo to take photographs of the gorillas, then do it. I know it’s very tempting to go on Google Images and simply pull a photograph off the Internet. However, when you use someone else’s photograph, your drawing will be vastly limited. You won’t be able to control the point of view, you can’t zoom in to get more details, and most likely the resolution of the photograph will be poor. Take the initiative to go to your subject and photograph it from every point of view, and get every detail that you need.
The only time I would advocate using someone else’s photograph as a reference is if there is absolutely, one hundred percent, no other way to get the visual information you need. For example, if you are doing an illustration of an elephant, and you need details of the wrinkles in the skin, that’s a circumstance where you’ll need to use someone else’s photograph. In general though, someone else’s photograph should be the last resort in terms of references.
When you do get to the point where you are working from a photograph, think about it as a process of gathering information which you then edit and manipulate. Nothing is worse than copying a photograph verbatim. If that is your intent, you might as well xerox the photograph and be done with it. Instead, take the information from the photograph and then process it, shift it, change it into something new and engaging. Be highly selective about what visual information you choose to use. Just because something is in the photograph, it doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to use it in your drawing. Think about yourself as an editor, where you get to choose from a vast buffet of visual information. Comb through all of the information in the photograph and use only what is going to help facilitate your drawing in a positive manner. I also find that it’s very helpful to work from multiple photographs, so that you are not so reliant on a single photograph for all of your information.
It’s extremely difficult to use a photographic reference well, very few people do it successfully. I firmly believe that the only way to truly learn how to draw from a photograph well is to establish a solid understanding of fundamentals in drawing with years and years of experience drawing from direct observation. Once you have solid skills drawing from direct observation, these skills will allow you to draw from a photograph successfully.
Related articles:
“How can I tell if I’m skilled enough?”
“How do you find your own individual style?”
“How do artists manage to get their soul out into images?”
“How do you develop an idea from a sketch to a finished work?”
“How do you make an art piece more rich with details that will catch the eye?”
“How do you learn the basics?”
“Is it bad to start another piece of art before finishing another one?”
“How do you work in a series?”
