Artists using Photographs to inspire or assist them?

[Steven Tribe]

One of my Christmas presents this year was a huge 5 kilo book on the Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershoi who has attracted a lot of interest the last few decades. He was active in the 1890's and the up to WW1. A good canvas from him is now in the million usd + category. He is best known for his portraits of his wife Ida (often seen from the back) and his plain domestic interiors.

Anyway, the book shows a lot of how the development of both studio and private photography impacted the lives of the cultural elite. For Hammershoi, the choice of motive for his own camera ( and from descriptions of the photos shown in the book, it was probably a 9x12cm camera) often matches the sort of pictures he painted.

This photo hobby was also put to more direct assistance in some of his portraits and land/townscapes.
There is a lot of general "Hammershoi" documentation deposited in public archives, including his private photos. One of these photos is a complete match to one of his most praised works which is the so-called "Engagement" portrait of his coming wife Ida. Now this print is badly exposed and the facial feature are faint, but the whole print has been grided up with a larger grid and a finer grid around the central image. The painting has been examined for a matching grid pattern and there are traces of a grid in areas with thinly applied paint.

I suppose that once the choice of a canvas dimension has been made, a grid has been drawn on the canvas which matches the grid drawn on the 9x12cm photograph. I suppose this was a taught procedure in the art colleges at the time - perhaps, still is?

The Hammershoi engagement/marriage was a very rushed affair, so no time for sittings. Actually, I think the portrait is very succesfull because of the very excellent posing and expression on Ida's face in the photograph.

[ic-racer]

Thanks for sharing this information. I got my MFA through an 'art' department, and I was keen to explore painters that used photography. At the time, Charles Sheeler was my favorite.
186054

[Tin Can]

My last wife painted old master style with oils from MF B&W 11X14 prints. 6 to 12 months per painting.

I never saw her use a grid.

Marnie's paintings are so highly valued some were stolen twice.

She painted punk rockers in the 70's and me in the 90's.

[Steven Tribe]

This is a better image of the coming bride!
The engagement/ marriage within a month or so was due to the (re)admission of her mother to an asylum. It explains something about her expression, I think.

[Steven Tribe]

Hammerhoi must have access to the larger format 18x24cm reisekamera as there is another example in the book. This time there is no evidence of a grid - but the photographic image is so close to the painting that it must have been used.
The quality of the 17x22.8cm photo is described as very poor from a partly faulty development and fingerprints. The Church is at the end of the street where Hammershoi lived in down town Copenhagen. The Church was under repair, with wooden scaffolding which caught Hammerhois interest.

[Tin Can]

Of Course camera obscura was used far longer than we can prove.

[altb44]

I've painted on canvas for quite a long time. When I was a student, we were taught to use a grid if we were using a photo or drawing for reference and wanted to transcribe the exact image, also to turn the picture upside down! However, the grid was really to teach us how to see. Most of the time, I don't use a grid now or photos. Still, if I want to get proportion right, say with painting a canvas with a model, I'll sketch in rudimentary lines...a sort of partial grid.

My point is, that the grid system is a recognized technique. Some artists use it, some don't.

If I am taking a painting from a drawing, I still turn the drawing upside down. :-)

[Jim Jones]

I routinely project a portrait negative onto paper or canvas to get an accurate start to the drafting. The light areas of the image are filled in, which results in a pale representation of the original due to the lower contrast of normal negatives. Much work remains to be done to bring the portrait to life.

[chassis]

I routinely project a portrait negative onto paper or canvas to get an accurate start to the drafting. The light areas of the image are filled in, which results in a pale representation of the original due to the lower contrast of normal negatives. Much work remains to be done to bring the portrait to life.

Great portraits, Jim.

[Tin Can]

Jim and Chassis reading your posts reminded me, my portrait artist wife did use an Opaque Projector (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opaque_projector) for drawings of pets.

I consider the Opaque Projector to be a modern Camera Obscura. Even a scanner is a form of Opaque Projection.

Yet still I never saw her use grids.

Marnie did hand retouch Playboy 8X10 Chromes by mail. She would not let me watch nor teach me anything about retouching...

[G Benaim]

Take a look at David Hockneys secret knowledge book or movie for an excellent survey of the use of optics by painters.

[Andrew O'Neill]

When I was at art school, I always based my drawings, paintings, etchings, lithographs, on images I shot with a borrowed Pentax K1000. At the time ('86-'88) I was working with parkades in Victoria and Vancouver... and I sketching on location. Found it easier to wander around and photograph, then got a friend who was taking photography to develop the film for me. The 5x7's she printed for me were a great aide back in my warm, comfortable studio.

[Tin Can]

My Art School teacher, I was already an old man, gave us a trick homework assignment.

He told us to draw ourselves nude from a tall mirror at home.

Next class we hung up our homework for all to see.

First he pointed out the cheaters, whom he said did it from a photograph.

Then he pointed out mine and a few others with very odd feet. We were supposed to draw what we saw from eye level perspective. In a mirror your feet will point down in a most unflattering way.

He liked the mirror drawings and dissed the photographers.

By the end of the class he awarded me with, 'most improved' but still worst in class!

We also all had to pose nude for the class one time.

Pro woman models were vastly prefered by every student. Male and female.

We had one Pro male model who had a 'drip' from his male part...some ladies walked out...

[Chester McCheeserton]

https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/videos/works/early-photo-paintings-70

[Hal Incandenza]

Chuck Close
Gerhard Richter
Luc Tymans
Richard Estes
Martin Kippenberger
David Hockney
Yvonne Jacquette
Edward Hopper

[Alan Klein]

My friend Mel Greifinger, a commercial artist all his life, used to snap photos or use others including mine, to create his final painting in oil or acrylics. We were out shooting one day at a Long Island NY park. He snapped me with his Nikon digital taking pictures with my micro 4/3 camera. Then he painted me changing the color of the girl's clothes and adding the mother goose "posing" for my camera along with her goslings. Good sense of humor. I recently bought the painting from him and have it hanging on my wall.

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5126/5345147466_d378050485.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/99kh7W)Admirer (https://flic.kr/p/99kh7W) by Alan Klein (https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/), on Flickr

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5123/5344555753_395e475213_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/99hfdZ)Painting of picture (https://flic.kr/p/99hfdZ) by Alan Klein (https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/), on Flickr

[Alan Klein]

Anyone interested in Mel's work can see it here.
https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/melgreifingercom.html

[Mark Sampson]

Painters have been using photographs as source material ever since the first painter who saw a photograph, so since 1839 or so. It's seldom been in their interest to admit it, though; it was considered a 'dirty secret', and in some minds it still is.
Artists' use of a camera obscura (or its predecessors) goes back a lot farther than that; Vermeer is only the most famous example. W.H. Fox Talbot himself began experimenting with light-sensitive materials only after his failure to make good drawings with a c.o. while on vacation in Italy...
No big deal, really. The work itself is what matters.

[William Whitaker]

Edgar Degas

[Mark Sampson]

And Thomas Eakins. It's a long list!

[locutus]

I've had some 'success', at least from a technical perspective, by printing at grade 5 on Ilford Matt paper, and then painting over that with lean layers of spirit thinned oils, a bit in the style of oil sketching.

No guarantees of it not crumbling off the gelatine at some point, but it was interesting to try.

[Drew Bedo]

There is a widely held belief that many renaissance painters used optical devices to assist thrm in getting realistic perspective in their works.

Penn and Teller did a documentary about a man who recreated one of Vermeer's paintings using mirrors to project the scene onto the canvass. Look for "Tim's Vermeer".

I would not be surprised to hear that many contemporary artists use some photographic process to inspire, inform or assist them in their creative process.

[Sean Mac]

The Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha was another artist who worked from photographs at times.

Some gridded photographs of his are to be seen here...

https://viola.bz/czech-art-nouveau-painter-alphonse-mucha/#more-7678

The grid method is still widely taught.

I prefer to use a proportional divider myself.