Working from photos comes up every semester I teach. The students are always concerned that it’s cheating. Ridiculous. If you know how to train yourself to draw, then photography is not an issue. It can help you see. Here’s why…

The camera does not capture the reality we experience. A photograph is a representation of reality, not a copy of it. A painting doesn’t copy reality either. It doesn’t come close. It is a representation, an impression, a suggestion, a feeling, an abstraction, and all the other descriptions of a painting, but it doesn’t capture reality like reality itself. No matter how good the quality of the representation is, it’s still flat.

The camera reduces three dimensional objects to a two dimensional plane. A painting does as well. Both represent an illusion of reality.

The camera is an ignorant, simple tool that freezes a moment in time, to preserve, hold, and prolong that moment for study. It simply modifies and reduces light to a tangible example.

A painting is not an excuse for a lack of photography.

The artist can record a moment as well, but that moment can expand into more than itself. It can communicate, uplift, confuse, inform, seduce, entertain, or express any number of emotional connections to the observer.

The artistic act of changing reality to two dimensions is difficult. Artists must learn to edit reality. The camera can help understand how to reduce reality to the constraints of a two-dimensional plane. It’s an editing tool.

This may all seem too simple, but it’s important for an artist to understand and grasp these distinctions on a very basic level. Many students I work with started like me, thinking that we were supposed to learn how to paint realistically, “like a photograph” in order to be considered ‘good.’ We got stuck with the idea that recording something exactly as we see it is the ultimate goal.

A painting is not an excuse for a lack of photography. A painting is its own expression, whether abstraction or realistic. No matter how detailed that painting may get while trying to ‘record’ reality, it can never become detailed enough. It’s not meant to be a recording, but an illusion.

Nothing wrong with that. But as I work with students and painters, we spend much time reducing the effort to it’s simplest process, so we can build complex emotional connections with an audience.

We work with photography, studying how it edits the light and values and shapes around us. It helps identify foreshortening, depth, silhouette, and form. It allows us to compose within a rectangle and find those balance points that the ‘golden mean’ is supposed to give us but rarely does. (Hint: we’re not meant to use the curve; we’re meant to use the principle of thirds it expresses)

If all it takes is a photograph to tell a story or express an idea, then no one needed to bother painting since the 1850’s.

If you refuse to use photography or are afraid it will ‘ruin’ your ability to draw, relax. If you’re paying attention and focusing on your training, then you won’t be convinced to only use photographs. There’s no Kool-Aid you can drink to make you lose your way and only work from photos. (Let’s be a little more resilient, shall we?) You can use reference to help you identify, and thereby, learn to draw better. It can even speed your training along.

You have to be smart about it. This is similar to some folks’ idea that you ‘shouldn’t use black’ when painting. Learn how to use black and you’ll be fine.

And you can use photography to trace. (Oh, stop. I saw the shock on your face. It’s not the end of the art world. If you can’t trace well, ya can’t draw well. A break, please.) Photographs helped me out of my struggle to grasp the multi-faceted training that drawing demands.

If all it takes is a photograph to tell a story or express an idea, then no one needed to bother painting since the 1850’s. There’s been some tremendously good paintings created since then, including many of your favorite, classic artists having used photography for inspiration and referral. I’m talking Sargent, Zorn, Mucha, Klimt, etc.

If you’re worried about it, then promise yourself going forward that you’ll be able to learn how, and thereby improve your ability to draw without a photo as well. Learn to draw from your mind (isn’t that what memorization is all about?), learn to draw from nature (isn’t that what life drawing classes are all about—the model is reference, y’know), and learn to draw from photography.

You just need to know the differences.