My original post “How to Swipe Like a Pro” got a lot of interesting comments, but will no doubt have no effect on the legions of people out there who seem to think using reference to make art is some sort of betrayal of principles. We really don’t care about those people, but I do care about things like this:
A fascinating new documentary, Corsi: The World’s First Male Supermodel, is now seeking funds on Kickstarter. I am a backer of this project.
Corsi’s face and figure was painted, sketched and sculpted by the likes of such great artists as John Singer Sargent, Pierre Auguste Cot and James Earle Fraser. There are statues and reliefs of Corsi found in New York’s Battery Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and countless other locations around the globe.
Corsi’s story begins as very young gypsy boy, who grew to consort with royalty and then lost everything. He died of consumption in 1924 at the age of 56. Bobby Nye, an opportunistic silent film actress and casual acquaintance of Corsi obtained power of attorney over the ailing man, who was unable to speak for himself in his final days. His large collection of costumes, priceless artwork and photographic archives were quickly liquidated. The following decades saw Corsi’s legacy slip into obscurity.
Here is a photograph of Corsi, used in an 1895 painting by John Singer Sargent.
And here is the final painting.
Wow, that dude Sargent uses photos for reference, just like Alex Ross.
I hope you’ll consider donating a dollar or two to this fascinating Kickstarter project.
Photo reference does not mean slavishly copying a photo, for those who don’t understand what it means. Notice how the folds of the fabric are completely different in the finished painting. And yet, some people would call that swiping. FFS. Using a photo as reference is not a crime. I don’t understand why this is so hard for some to get through their heads. Photographing a model in a pose that’s hard to hold for long; shooting something you don’t have time to sketch and use for reference later; or even using photoshop to scale, rotate, and position different elements to figure out a composition — these are not exactly crimes against art.
I really don’t understand why some people just don’t get this point at all. It’s rather bizarre to me. I haven’t done one in a long time, but there was a period where I did portraits in pencil of actors in costume parts – all drawn freehand from stills from the productions. No tracing, no light-boxing – just eyeing the picture and drawing. Sean Connery as Agamemnon in Time Bandits, Toshiro Mifune from Shogun, Glenda Jackson from Elizabeth R, the Four Musketeers from Richard Lester’s films. At the time I did them, nobody would consider them swiping at all. It’d be interesting to see what kind of comment they’d excite these days.
I really should scan them anyway. Maybe I’ll get scans up on my website later this year.
But in the meantime — the other thing that gets me about this strange mentality that using photos at any point in the process is cheating, is that I just can’t take it seriously. The difference between artists who are using photos as reference and those who just flat copy them … well, I believe it does show up in the work. Maybe I’m fooling myself, but I think there’s something key missing when the artist just copies photos.