The Artful Codgers

The Artful Codgers

Elven Maid (click to see larger version)Note the image on the left. I painted this in Photoshop almost two years ago, and I will readily admit that I used a photo of Audrey Hepburn as a reference. The photo was black and white, though, and Audrey obviously didn’t have elven ears [unless you know different], so I don’t really feel as though I’ve literally copied anything. BUT…

Deep down inside, I feel as though I somehow cheated.

Now, I used to frequent art forums online, and in every single one of them, the topic of “What’s Art?” would come up. [And never you mind about it, as I’m not looking for a debate; I’m just saying that it’s what wannabes like me tended to do in such forums.] In any case, there would be some die-hard lovers of the arts who would claim that 3D art wasn’t art because a computer was involved, blah, blah, and that real art was all about using real paints, etc., etc. Then there would be those who would claim that art was all about passion, emotion and the act of creating from the heart and soul and all ten toes, no matter how godawful the so-called artwork really was.

Okay. That said, I’ll admit that I’m of the camp that believes art requires skill, whatever the medium and whatever the purpose, be it digital or traditional—and to hell with all that crap about feeling or creating messages that move and uplift society. If feeling is involved, fine. If the artwork has a message, fine. But damn it, it had better look like it took some semblance of skill to make it, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart and soul and all ten toes.

Then on Sunday, I saw something on 60 Minutes that totally rocked my world. Apparently, the old art masters—da Vinci, Caravaggio, Van Eyck, and the like, most especially those who are very well known for their realism—knew about photographic devices, used them, and traced their work. Traced!

Anyway, even though there was a die-hard art historian on the show that dismissed the whole theory as hogwash, the evidence was pretty convincing—so much that I looked the book up and stuck it on my wish list to bookmark it for later. It really did rock my world.

Then I thought about it, and I thought about it some more.

Even if the old masters did trace their work, it still took a lot of skill to bring the traced work to life—choosing the colors and blending them to match the photographic image on the canvas. Then, of course, there are the sculptors, who certainly didn’t have CAD back then [again, unless you know different]. So they’re all still pretty whiz-bang artists.

Just the same… knowing how the old masters might have pulled off making their masterpieces, I feel a little bit better about having used a reference photo for the image mentioned above. Of course, if anyone finds the original photos that I used as a reference for Alien Barbecue, I am in really, really big trouble.

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9 thoughts on “The Artful Codgers”

  1. They certainly did trace. Is it cheating? No.

    I got in an argument with a fine artist once, over digital art. She claimed that I am no longer a “real artist” because in her words, “Digital art is just a bunch of electrons floating in space.”

    I reminded her that oil paintings and marble sculptures are also just “a bunch of electrons floating in space.” Everything is. Your 3D art is just as real and legitimate as any other piece of artwork. :^)

  2. Same with people who argue that digital photography isn’t -real- photography because you edit it in photoshop. Uh, HELLO? Ansel Adams edited his photographs in the dark room.

    The art is in the eye, not the equipment.

  3. Dave and Nikki, I agree! Digital art and digital photography take just as much skill, if not more, to create. If purists want to argue over the tools, they might as well make their own paints and their own cameras as well, to really and truly make their point.

    Whenever I get into a debate over it, I always end up quoting from John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins:

    art – [13] Like arm, arthritis, and article, art goes back to an Indo-European root *ar-, which meant ‘put things together, join.’ Putting things together implies some skill: hence Latin ars ‘skill.’ Its stem art– produced Old French art, the source of the English word. It brought with it the notion of ‘skill,’ which it still retains; the modern association with painting, sculpture, etc did not begin until the mid 17th century. Latin derivatives of ars include the verb artire ‘instruct in various skills,’ from which ultimately English gets artisan [16]; and artificium, a compound formed with a variant of facere ‘do, make,’ from which we get artificial [14].

    >arm, arthritis, article, artificial, artisan, inert

    In other words, it’s not about the medium; it’s not about emotion; it’s not about conveying a message to the viewer. It’s all about skill, baby.

  6. Oh yea, look at this:

    O
    /( )\

    .. ..
    (head a lot bigger in real life)

    Attempt at drawing a stick figure on a computer.

    Well, that one turned out…well, better than expected, must be because of lack of sleep.

  8. I think that art is in the conveyance of life: a thought, belief, observation, or realization.

    This determination enables one to distinguish between a plain photo of me at age three and this photo of April.

    Art
    Art Not

  9. Tony, I dare say you’ve done a fine job drawing a stick figure at a beheading, so I’m not quite sure what you’re complaining about. ;o)

    And Warren? You were too cute at 3, and if your new redesign isn’t art, I don’t know what is. You’ve done a great job on the layout, and if or when I redesign in pure CSS, I might just have to borrow your code!

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