Do you prefer to paint or draw from life, or from reference photographs? 

As an Art Student, I live and breath painting from life, and from photographs. I cant recomend either of them and tell you that is the best way to go. Painting and drawing from life and from photographs are both great techniques that build different skills.

Both of these paintings are done from still life. While painting from life you are building skills such as planning your painting, problem solving and how it will be best placed on the canvas. In my first image, I love the way the bachground is bright and the main image of the vase is grey, and the tea cup is grey, and then your eyes are drawn to the green of the apple just barely in the portrait. I planned that pretty perfectly as my main image was of the vase itself. Within the second painting, I did not plan that very well with the teddy bear. The teddy bear is leaning off of the canvas, and it makes it look a little rushed and unplanned. Some people may like this, however, I think it does not work for the composition. With painting from life, you can easily add in your own colours or change the apple to a pear. 

The downside of painting from still life is making sure your painting makes as much sense as you want it to. Art is completely subjective, and there is no way to make a painting that is visually appealing for EVERYONE, but to have a painting that makes sense is challenging. With the second painting I was trying to make it a little abstract and funky, and it doesnt exactly come across as it is obvioulsy a bear just with weird colour details.

Both of these paintings are done from reference pictures. While painting from reference photos you learn to see detail, you figure out proportion, and you build on paint-mixing skills. Painting from reference photos can be difficult, especially if you decide to paint a portrait. While painting portraits are great, I tend to obsess over the details, my second painting is a portrait of the rapper Nicki Minaj, and I have come to terms with it not exactly looking like her. However, my first image is pretty good, I played with the table a bit, but I got the colours pretty spot on. I played with the shading on my hand, and I think the painting was successful. 

The downside with painting from reference photos is that there is not fixing the composition, sure you can crop out the knife like I did in the second image, but its hard to make it the same image without "zooming" in more on her face. Pictures are also very "flat" images. While painting from still life, you can get up walk around, move your image around, you can FEEL the paintings roundness more. While painting from a photo, the image is as flat as it gets, there is no roundness of the face, no roundness of the fingers. It can be complicated to get that effect in your painting.

Drawing from life is equally as complicated as painting from life. I enjoy drawing from life a fair bit more than drawing from photographs. Admiring the human body with all its imperfections, you can learn so much about drawing in general. Proportion is suck a crucial skill with drawing from life. Throughout my two years of being able to draw the human figure from life, my drawing has developed to a whole other level. The first drawing was a still life fabric study, which is equally as reqarding. Studying the fabric folds was hard, and getting the shading to make sense took a while. I have to say drawing from still life is one of my more favourite parts of drawing.

I cant even think of a downside, drawing from life is literally so rewarding. 

Drawing from a photo is good for learning proportion, but besides that I feel like if you are going to draw, do it from life. Look in a mirror while you draw your face. My drawing looks pretty accurate to my face, but this does not take very much skill. I would not have done this if it was not for the dreaded assignment I was faced with.

A pretty interesting thing about drawing from photos, is you learn about texture. This image is my beloved SNECKTOPUS! Snail Shell, Gecko Eyes, and octopus tentacles! Adorable or what? This was drawing from only three reference photos, which was definetly rewarding. I learned texture, I got to be creative. This is the good part about drawing from reference photos. 

But again, if you have the opportunity to draw from life... DO IT! :D

Tessa ~*