Oil Painting

How to deal with digital reference material

In today’s Covid world, artists, like everyone else, have not been exempt from pandemic related problems.  As a realist painter, I have always chosen to work from life, whether my subject is a figure, still life, or landscape. What I enjoy about working from life is that both eyes give me the depth perception that I would not get from a photo, not to mention all the subtleties of light, shadow, color, and edges.  However, in this new world, even a classically trained artist like myself has had to transition to the digital age. Over the course of a year, I painted a body of work featuring myself as the model. Some of the pieces were painted from photos. 

The first thing I discovered, as silly as it may seem, was the intense amount of eye strain I experienced.  It was an adjustment I had to make, as I never had this problem when painting from life. I started using eyeglasses that really helped combat the problem and made the process easier for me. On the technical side, I quickly discovered that our eyes see things differently from a photo than from life.  I had to fill in the blanks and create the many elements that I could not see in the photo. Another issue I quickly encountered was related to proportion size. I was accustomed to working life-size or sight-size, and found it challenging to make the proportional changes in my mind. To address this problem, I had to adjust my painting size to match the reference image.  

I found that using a grid was useful in keeping track of the proportional distortion.  As you can see in the image below, I started with a grid to place the big shapes and complete the drawing.  To see the painting and reference photo I used a mirror to make proportional comparisons.  I also worked upside down and sideways for the same purpose.  On a funny note, I found that closing one eye also helped correct the distortion that comes from using two eyes (lenses) to interpret an image captured by a single camera lens.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, a quality photo is of the utmost importance. Photos tend to distort things, especially when compressed. Without an exceptional photo, you miss the subtle nuances that typically only appear when working from life.  To fill in some of the missing links, I would prepare four images: the original, a more contrasted version, a black and white, and a slightly desaturated version.  This allowed me to switch between images and see some of the things that I would expect to see when working from life.

Though I have always considered myself a classically trained realist, I must admit, I also enjoy painting from a photo.  You do not have to work as quickly – you can take your time! And once I figured out solutions, I found it just as fulfilling as painting from life. 

If you would like to see more photos of this body of work, titled “A Fool’s Journey” check out my website www.leahlopez.com. You’ll also find some free instructional videos there!

Be safe and happy painting!

We are pleased to share this week’s blog from OPA Master artist Mary Qian.  Mary will be giving a live demonstration at the upcoming OPA National Convention in Santa Fe, NM, August 24-29, 2021. Tickets and more information will be available soon through the OPA website.

My first job out of art school was in video game animation.  The work entailed using computer graphics to bridge the gap between realism and fantasy.  While my day job was animation, my goal was to establish a fine art career, where I could dedicate myself to creating paintings based on working with live models.  In following my dream, I moved from fantasy to reality, computer to life.

I am now the professional artist I set out to be, painting from life. However, I often find reality and fantasy intertwined in the world around me.  Computerizing and digitizing is done to practically everything.   Hi-definition television displays pictures that become so sharp they remove atmospherics, intensify color, and alter the value range so much that they become hyper-realistic visual fantasies.  Yet these fantasies are often perceived by the viewer as more “real” than reality. 

The computer has entered my realm of painting too. The trend I see towards “photo realism” mixes fantasy and reality.  A camera does not record an object or a face in the same way the human eye and brain perceives it. The new cameras and computer programs used to manipulate digital images have resulted in works of art that become idealized fantasies mistaken as reality. 

Some artists seem to prefer working from a manipulated digital image to working from life.  Other artists rely on digital images only as a last recourse. I believe in working from life as much as possible. 

It may be that the buyers’ taste is directing the market, and thereby, dictating the method used by some artists.  Art buyers, as much as TV viewers, seem to prefer this new definition of reality: where everything is so clean, crisp or manipulated it is no longer real.  These images have become such a part of our lives that they have become the new reality.  

Yet when you compare one of these contemporary, hyper-realist works with a Repin or a Rembrandt, which painting feels like it is living, breathing, and caught in thought?  Personally, I love and prefer the old master paintings and drawings.  It is the psychological connection between artist and subject that I find so compelling. A painting rendered from life reflects more than just the image that is in front of the artist—it includes the artist’s mood and the conversation between the artist and sitter. When an artist paints from a photo, this direct human-to-human connection is lacking. 

A photo only captures a fraction of a second in the life of model. In contrast, a painting from life captures the model over a longer period of time. During the process of painting, which can last many hours to many days, different aspects of the sitter are revealed, such as shifts in expression and posture, and changing emotions. Variations in lighting and angles of position also occur.  As such, a model’s face will look different in various stages of the painting process and on different days.  The artist has an opportunity to capture and combine all of these aspects.  

The artist also inevitably mixes his or her own feeling into the painting – what they are going through in their own lives during that period of time. Each stroke will be the evidence of these emotions, yet correct drawing, value and color still have to be in order for the painting to resemble the subject. The subject conceals the artists’ emotions, but also reveals them in this process.

Perhaps it is fair to say that painting from life is to capture the essence of the subject, while painting from a photograph is to create a vision or fantasy of the subject. It can be extremely meaningful to do the latter, but in most cases, I am still more interested in capturing what I perceive as reality. 

After criticizing young painters who worked only from photos, Andrew Wyeth said. “I paint fantasy but come through realism to do it.  Respecting the object is realism, sitting with it. Realism is a lid for emotion.”  Wyeth’s portraits, while carefully edited, tend to appear tight, while Repin’s much looser, and more painterly—but both masterfully show the humanity of the sitter.   It is the elusive life within that I seek in my work. That is why I paint.

Did you know that OPA has been sharing artists’ blog posts for over ten years?  We have an extensive collection available to the public on our website. This summer, OPA will be taking Deep Dives into our archives and sharing our favorite posts from years past. Please enjoy this first Deep Dive by the late OPA Master Charles Movalli.

At one of my always stimulating dinners with my late friend Zyg Jankowski, he said to me that the first decision a painter has to make about his work is a spacial one: how “deep” do you want to make the picture? John Carlson felt that every foot into nature counted; Ed Whiney had no interest in such realistic depth and recommended a student plan the composition on-site but walk around a corner to paint it. Over the years, I’ve been of several minds about the question. Under Emile Gruppe’s tutelage, I naturally followed Carlson’s path. Later, I experimented with a flatter approach, one which, carried to an extreme, can make the subject disappear in a series of flat planes.

I rather enjoyed the broken, lively look of such surfaces. but felt that, after awhile, my pictures all began to look alike. They lacked mood. Now modern artists like Hans Hoffmann despised the idea of mood; in fact, he called it a “swindle”– an easy way to make a pictorial statement at the cost of the more important and thoughtful thing: composition. My flat pictures, on the other hand, were all composition. I wandered back to a more “realistic” approach under the influence of artists like Sargent–who has undergone a publishing boom in the last twenty years–Sorolla, and the slew of recently discovered Russians.

I also encountered a Timkov at the old Fleisher Museum which astonished me, since it had both mood and a selective flatness in its approach. Indeed, all the artists I have mentioned knew when to go flat and when to add modeling. Gruppe, for example, would make fun of still-lifes whose pots and bottles were so roundly-modeled that you got “dizzy” looking at them. I also had an important lesson from him early in my career. I had done a rocky hillside with trees against the sky and bushes in the foreground. He came along with a big brush, eliminated a distracting silhouette by pushing the trees out of the top of the frame and mushed the foreground bushes into insignificance. He then drew a few dark lines in the rocks, emphasizing their structure.

Done! That night, I jotted down his criticism: “In full light, you saw only the masses–as the sun went down, you saw the details and put them all in.” Of course, it took a while for this lesson to sink in! Sargent’s famous Lake Louise painting consists of similar flat smudges, and huge, dark-and-light compositional planes, all set off by a minimum of modeling in the foreground water. Such magic is possible when you give up any attempt to copy a subject photographically and instead focus on the large, simple masses that give the scene its visual interest. Once these planes are defined, very little modeling is need to bring “realism” to the subject. That is why I don’t feel that the time I spent on my “flat period” was wasted: on the contrary, it made me even more aware of the importance of simple planes. It taught me how to summarize what I saw, how to make a precis of it–after which, I could put in as much “detail” as I wanted. In short, by adding very little, I could see how much I could get away.

When entering a museum, I am always anxious to see how this sort of slight-of-hand is practiced by the Masters. Not their manual skill, you understand; not, for example, how well they have painted the wings of a fly on a flower. But rather, how they have summarized that flower, reduced it to a few basic planes — and then brought it all to life by an edge or two and a few subtle shifts in value.

Note: for a further discussion of these points, check out YouTube:

I stumbled into painting the hunt by chance. My meandering path of artistic enthusiasms led me from landscape painting, to a spell as a professional portrait painter, and then, to the blossoming Plein Air movement, with its events and associations. Each held interest for me, but did not quite hold my focus. 

A commission to paint a child led to a commission to paint his father, who was a Master with a local foxhunting club. A Master is an official of the club and is entitled to wear the distinctive scarlet jacket and colored collar. For the portrait, rather than sit him in a chair, I decided to go out and see what a foxhunt looked like. That was a revelation! 

A typical hunt meeting begins in the morning at a designated fixture, the term for the farm or property where the participants assemble. Trailers roll in and unload horses. Riders tack up and mill around in low morning light, against a backdrop of beautiful Maryland countryside. The hounds arrive and spill out noisily, as the huntsmen and whippers-in keep them in hand. The hosts bring out stirrup cups and a light snack to serve the mounted field. Then, with a note on the horn, off they go!

From the day of my first hunt, I have spent almost a decade and a half focused on painting a mix of subjects that are connected to the world of horses in Maryland and the mid-Atlantic region. Foxhunters often ride Thoroughbreds to keep them fit, and race them in the spring at local events called point to points. These events are regional in flavor and have an informal air. The National Steeplechase Association offers a full season of sanctioned races and events, including the professional version of American Jump Racing. And of course, there is the track, known as flat racing, with the largest purses as well as a national audience. All this is supported by horse breeding and training, a large part of the economy of our area. 

The true subject matter is the people who fiercely maintain these traditions. With family connections that reach back generations, they form a unique culture. I have found them to be an admirable bunch. Good humored, they love to be outdoors and enjoy a good party. They have been very welcoming to an artist who is constantly asking if he can hang around, set up an easel along the racecourse, or offer his pictures for sale at various events. They have been extremely generous, and I believe genuinely appreciate seeing their way of life represented with interest and authenticity.   

The challenges this sport sets for a painter are considerable. At first, I spent time attending events with a camera in hand. Everything moved so fast, I did not yet have the skills to attempt working directly from life. As I began to understand what I wanted to paint, I began to bring my plein air skills to bear. I learned that gouache was the best medium for working quickly on location. Painting the landscape was the easy part. The horses, hounds and figures were more challenging!

I realized that painting the horse on location meant that I needed to be able to do so from my knowledge of the subject. I set myself a program of study to memorize the basic forms and actions of the Thoroughbred. The best tool for this turned out to be sculpture. A couple of simple clay models helped the most. I understand DeGas’ wax horse models now. They taught him the form and served as studio tools to paint the pattern of light and shade correctly. This is the opposite of the usual advice “to paint what you see, not what you know”! Without knowledge of horse anatomy, you cannot interpret the immediate visual information. Armed with new skills, I have increased my ability to produce several useful studies from each event I attend. Many studies stand alone as complete works, but more often, they are a step along the path to realizing a fully finished, larger composition. 

This is an Oil Painters group, but let me add a bit about gouache. I use gouache as oil painting by other means. I use the same pigments, put them out on an arm palette, often use them at full strength, and build up the image like an oil painting. Gouache can be used like watercolor, but I like the opaque covering power. It cannot be beaten for speed and convenience on location, and for travel. It also is practical as a medium for previewing an idea for a composition. I use it for working from my imagination as it allows for quick correction and exploration. 

Photography still plays a large role in my work. I love working from photos, they inspire and reveal aspects of the subject I simply would not see any other way. The races and hunts are photographed by many professionals and amateurs alike, and I have made great use of their work, always with permission and compensation. Some people shoot with me in mind, having previously discussed the aspects of the event in which I am interested. As the Official Artist for the National Steeplechase Association, I work closely with their Official Photographer, who is the only person with on-course access. It is a collaborative process. 

My style is painterly and expressive, and my frequent work on location cultivates the impressionistic effect I strive to maintain in the studio. Sporting Art is often set on a lower pedestal by art critics, because the Sport aspect often supersedes the Art. My aim is to express the visual poetry, but also be a keen interpreter of the peculiar character of the subject. “Expression without description” is a personal motto.  

My oil technique is simple. I do not use solvents. Refined linseed oil is my only medium. I mix a small amount into the pigments I do not find buttery enough from the tube. After that, little oil is added. I do not like working on gessoed panels. I need the texture of canvas to achieve the look I want. Everything is directly painted with no preliminary drawing, although, as De Laszlo said, “All my painting is drawing”.  

I try to finish a painting in one continual process, rarely taking longer than a couple of days. If the painting is not working, it gets scraped or discarded. My most important insight over many years of painting is to not hesitate to begin again. Most lengthy battles on an oil painting are lost. Sargent suggested that a satisfactory portrait could not be achieved by correction of unsatisfactory parts; it had to be begun again and built up in a smooth process. I think this is true of almost all subjects. If I start well and keep the flow, I may succeed in carrying it through. This sort of oil painting will not usually allow you to pull out a win with late fixes.

I do not see an end to my enthusiasm for being a Sporting Artist. It combines all the subjects to which I am attracted. For a painter who maintains the traditions of representational oil painting, it seems to be a particularly good fit. 

Over more than a decade of painting on location at equestrian events, I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen another artist. I invite you to come on out and give it a try. See you at the races!