How I paint portraits

[leyna55]

Recently, I received several comments which suggested that I took "heads from pictures and then ran them through filters." and possibly "stole the bodies too." Now I was annoyed, and the matter has been dealt with, but I would like to set the record straight. There are people who are justly proud of their photomanipulation and photoshop skill, but

Comments

[ratcreature]

It's really interesting to see your process. Though I'm sorry you had to deal with such comments.

Personally I don't understand why some people get in such a huff over the various ways artists can use photos directly or as reference anyway. I mean, with plenty of traditional media fanart portraits you can tell which promo photos served as reference and nobody thinks that's cheating, and other people do cool things with digital paintovers that rely heavily on the underlying photos but are still something new in the end. I've always thought that as long as the result is pleasing, anything goes in art, provided you are honest about what you've done and give credit to any sources you used. Like take Roy Lichtenstein who blew up comic panels to giant size and repainted them. (though iirc some comic artists were actually disgruntled over the lack of credit, also that he made a lot of money, but fandom is non-profit, and we use the sources without having proper rights to them anyway, so obviously you aren't going to get the rights for your photoreference first as you might have to with certain professional art)

[leyna55]

Thanks!

I hope its clear from the post that the only thing which annoyed me was the implication of lying (well, and a little for the way the comments were expressed). I admire all kinds of graphic art, photo manipulations and paintovers. I've always been in TV based fandoms where the attitude to graphic art, collages, manipulation and paintovers was the same as for paintings and drawings ("ooh, pretty!).

Yes, I can definitely see a point with commercial art and with giving proper credit, but some people's attitudes to using references (that it's somehow cheating - whut?), and fannish use of promo pictures and screen caps etc is surprising.