Lately, I've been thinking about the possibility of working from photographs. I don't have anything against art that's made from photos, and in fact some of the artists in my recommended links use photo references for their paintings. I have a lot of ideas and images swimming around in my brain that I know would be a lot easier to realize if I wasn't subject to the vagaries of working from life. Ultimately a work of art suceeds or fails on it's own merits regardless of how it was concieved.
                    Thomas Eakins used photo references quite extensively in his work. Recent evidence has brought to light that he used photos more  than previously thought. Who cares? I saw his painting of a man playing a cello at the Met recently and it blew me away. If using photo references was what Eakins needed to make his powerful statements than so be it. Eakins paintings have this kind of explosive energy that's just bubbling under the surface. You always get the feeling that he's holding something back. That he would love to paint like Sargent or Velasquez but that he had a mistrust of facility in painting. Using photos may have helped him to keep the kind of detachment that makes his work smolder.
                    Many well known portrait artists use photos to complete their paintings. Typically they will make a small painted sketch from life and then use photos to complete their work back in their studios. Most clients with the money to afford an expensive portrait don't have the time or inclination to sit for thirty hours. The trick it seems is to paint from the photo with the freshness and spontaneity one would use (hopefully) if painting the model from life.
                      So, having these thoughts, I decided to take the digital camera with me on the family vaction to Lake George. I wasn't looking for candid shots but I thought I would get my daughters to pose or snap them when they just naturally fell into something along the lines of what I was looking for. I ended up with two images that I know would make good paintings. One shows the two girls standing in the lake on a gray day with the mountains behind them and the water being whipped up around them into steely gray patterns. Another shows Briana sitting under a stand of trees reading a book with the sun just glinting through at the top of the tree lines in a very Corot-esque silvery light.
                      When I got home I downloaded them onto the computer, tweaked them a little, and then printed them out as 8 by 10's. I was ready to give it a shot. I got out my sketchbook and made a drawing from the first one. The drawing came out reasonably well, there was only one problem. I just wasn't feeling very inspired. So I tried again on the next photo; same thing, good drawing-zero inspiration. I guess I need to be in the actual space that I'm painting. Of course, I thought, it's the light "dummy", that I initially respond to. The image is always secondary to what I'm feeling about the light. The other problem is that instead of the possibilities of using the camera making me feel freer it had a stultifying effect. I started to think that maybe I should carry the camera with me at all times. And instead of only working from people that I know, I could start taking snaps of people wherever I went. Heck I don't even have to take the photos myself I could go on the internet and make paintings from photos of people around the world. I could even use photos from the past, How cool would it be to show Eakins and myself hanging out at McSorleys talking anatomy and crewing?
        But alas, it is not meant to be. That's okay because I realize there are still a lot of things left for me to paint using the old eyeball method. If my wife can't pose than I'll go in the studio and work on a still life. Cabin fever from being cooped up in the studio? I'll go out and paint a landscape. Change of pace ?how about an interior; combines a little bit of still life with a landscapey kind of feel. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the figurative compositions that I have spinning around in my head are just going to have to wait a little longer until I can figure out a way to do it "old school". You know, Rembrandt, Rubens etc; I'm sure the problems of working from life are nothing new to this century and coordinating the whole thing may have been even harder back in the days. " Oh well, I'm sorry Mr. Greco I won't be able to pose for you on Tuesday, I have to appear before the inquisition."