i've been seeing quite a bit of discourse lately about artists using references and i find that kind of baffling? i've seen some people say they are getting hate for using references, some people say they don't dare call themselves artists because they use references, and i've also been harassed over using references myself.
i'm self taught and all the artists i've admired and learned from have used references to paint, and since my main field of work is realism/semi-realism involving painting real people, using references feels only logical.
i saw someone say to an artist "if you can’t paint from imagination, you might have some form of aphantasia". um what? you can be able to imagine something in great detail, doesn't mean you can accurately and realistically translate it into a drawing/painting. you still have to observe the light, shadow, shape, perspective. you might think you know exactly what something looks like, but that doesn't mean that's actually what it looks like. even when using references, i often flip the canvas to force my brain into seeing just shapes instead of what my brain thinks i'm seeing.
artists throughout history have used references, everyone always painted what they saw. most people don't have the privilege to have a subject sit for them for hours on end like in the olden days, so we use photos. if you're painting portraits of characters from shows or movies or real people you don't know, you'll use references. there are artists, though, with decades of experience who develop sort of a visual library in their mind so they don't have to rely on references as much, but this comes from years of working from references.
companies i've done work for, like Penguin Random House or Lucasfilm, have provided me with references to work from expecting me to use them.
i feel like, more often than not, people who complain about artists using references aren't in the same field at all and they create art that doesn't really require references. i have never seen, no matter their style, a professional artist complain about how another artist chooses to paint, if they use references or not, it's always those who have no idea how painting a portrait actually works trying to gatekeep something they know nothing about.
and to those people, i just wanna say: pick a reference and try to make a decent painting in your medium of choice. go on. you can even trace it, just to give you a bit of a head start. let's see how easy it is, yeah? how many hours it takes, how many do-overs, let's see how many paintings you'll have to paint before you're able to create something presentable.
i feel like this is such a silly thing to even have to talk about, but artists are turning onto each other for the stupidest things these days, as if there aren't more important things to be pissed off about in today's world. like just make your art and let others make theirs, it's that simple
2087
stormborns
yousharknotpass
