Seeing as a Painter – Part 1

While applying a filter or technique to a photo can result in a more abstract or painterly looking image, to become a true equal to a painting requires much more. It involves seeing it as a Painter. I want to explore this concept because I believe it is fundamental to creating fine art regardless of whether it is done with traditional artistic mediums or digitally.

Those of you who have seen my work either on the WEB, these forums, or in final print form know that my goal is to create the exact look, feel and nuances of paintings done with traditional artistic mediums. But rather than redrawing, tracing, or painting over the photograph, I work by transforming the digital photograph directly. To be successful though I have to have a very keen understanding of what makes a Painting a Painting. In the recent movie The Prestige, one of the principal characters remarks “The illusion must be perfect!. Once the audience knows the secret, the trick is useless.” I feel that the same goes for creating Digital Painting. If the viewer can see through the illusion so that the technique used becomes obvious, or the image looks half-baked or crudely done, the appreciation of it as fine art becomes lost. If the viewer can stand an inch away from the final piece and not be able to detect the underlying photo, or see the digital trickery, then the magic feat is at least halfway accomplished.

What makes a Painting different From a Photograph?

Let’s begin this discussion by exploring what makes a photograph different from a Painting. I call this the Bridge from Photo to Painting, and it is fundamental to creating fine Digital Painting. Below is a table of some of the innate factors that I feel separate Photographs from Paintings.

 Seeing Beyond Reality

Now lets explore further and discuss how Painters see beyond the reality of the photograph.

One of the biggest problems new painters face is interpreting their subject too literally. They often want to capture every blade of grass or leaf on a tree. If there is a telephone pole in the middle of a scene they will diligently paint it in.

Photographers, prior to Photoshop, were basically forced to do the same thing without doing some very difficult retouching. Now we have the ability to significantly editorialize the content of an image digitally, thus allowing us the same freedom to interpret our scene rather than render it. We can optimize composition, alter color and tonality and saturation, and add and subtract elements to create a scene that didn’t even exist before.

The above two images are the same subject but the one on the left portrays true reality while the right hand image is my interpreted reality. In it I envisioned how the scene would look in the moonlight and interpreted the colors, tonality, and details accordingly. You will note streaks of unnatural colors not really found in nature seemingly randomly mixed in on the snow to give the feeling  of moonlight on snow. Some elements were taken out, such as the bush in the right side of the photo, and other elements added to improve the composition and flow of the artwork. Notice that the sky is expanded to give the composition a better balance, and there is a yellow glow in the sky on the upper right hand side of the image to imply moonlight without actually having to show any moon at all. Even though the colors are un-natural, the viewer instantly recognizes this scene as a moonlit night scene. There are enough details in the foreground to distinguish the Yucca plants, but many of the details in the background are left vague.
To summarize, simply rendered as a photograph, though technically well executed, the first image is nice, but no bell ringer. By interpreting reality through skilled painterly rendering, the image becomes a very powerful statement.
 

In this next example I’ve shown a very ordinary photo of a pool scene at our local park. While there are some interesting elements, it does not pack any punch as a great work of art or even photograph. Now examine the image on the right. It evokes a feeling of time and place. By rendering the details vaguely and presenting it as a series of brush stokes and colors, the image plays with our imagination and lets us experience the scene vs. simply view it. The image is the same, but the interpretation is what sets it apart.

In this last example I’ve taken a rather ordinary Umbrian farmhouse and created a completely different looking image. It is not just that I altered the colors or added a sunset. It’s that I’ve created a whole different mood and feeling to the subject matter and evoked the look of an Italian Renaissance painting. The composition is well balanced and all the colors work together in harmony. In summary I can create a mood by re-interpreting the colors and elements found in the original scene.

In future essays I'll be further exploring this topic and show examples of some of the steps I use to reveal the Painting from the starting photograph.

Master Class Tutorial Series

Gallery