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I have noticed a stigma attached to photo painting (paintovers) in this community and other online communities that I simply do not understand. Quite frequently I will read smug remarks with the implication that photo painting is somehow sub par or a substandard choice of artistic expression when compared to other mediums.

 I really have a problem with this notion and unfair stigma that seems to be attached to these types of works and those practicing “artists” (yeah I said artists). I understand that doing a paint over of an photograph that you didn’t even take could be considered a bit cheap, especially for those who try and pawn off the idea that those are original works etc.

However, photo paintings done in such a fashion in which the “artist” actually took the time to capture the original photograph themselves and then transform it into a type photo painting should be considered a valid art form just as photography itself is, and any other artistic medium.

Let me pose a hypothetical question to you? If you happen to be someone that takes issue with photo painting, yet “paint” 100% digitally yourself (albeit from scratch) is your work really any more “real” or “justifiable” to a photo painting? Is it any less “real” or “justifiable” to a traditional painting? Hmmmm.

Or could it be that it is just different.

When I look at images posted online or real life, the first thing that strikes me is composition and whether or not the image is pleasing to my eye. If I enjoyed the piece I would not suddenly like it less because I found out it wasn’t created in a certain fashion. How a particular image is created is always very secondary in my mind, and usually I would only ask out of curiosity if for some reason the “how” was not readily apparent.

 I think those who take issue with photo painting are just trying to justify their work to themselves and elevate themselves in some desperate attempt to reach for some abstract level of superiority.

So I ask if the work  is original, with all the sources being the original creation of the artist, why should we care what it is? Especially if the image is pleasing to the eye.

In most case it isn't the Photo Paint over that is the big problem but rather when they claim to be freehand painting, I sometimes work either way and there is a big difference!

Edie

 John,

I too have noticed this.  Here is a piece on the subject that I wrote for my blog:

http://kevinparnell.com/?page_id=15

I think the opportunity is new and with new things people often have problems. It is of course not free paint, but Dürer and other tools used. There are good and bad Overpainting. The automatic Overpainting is usually not good. Overpainting good you have to learn and not be dominated Everyone.

Sorry if the English is bad here. It is a computer translator. My English is worse.

Klecksel

"So I ask if the work  is original, with all the sources being the original creation of the artist, why should we care what it is? Especially if the image is pleasing to the eye."

As professional painter totally agree, as an illustrator who has to use other peoples images I'd have to look at in a different way. It's an ilustration, and whether I traced the image on a grant enlarger (remember those [LOL]) and used rubylith to transfer the image on to CS10 or Painter to over paint, it's still an ilustration, a job! (not sure I'd call it art though)

Overpainting is great, most of us do it(commercially or otherwise), but for me it gives you the chance to bring the image alive. To experiment with treatments, the option to include or not include(big thing for me!!!), layers, undo etc. I feel that if it's done right it is a painting in it's own right despite how it was created.

As I've said before, my fellow artists do rib me about using Painter. But when we worked together we would all use tracing paper or whatever shortcut would get the job done.

I did a lot of airbrush work in the 70's, technical illustration stuff. We'd have a photographer shoot a product and I'd workover the print, masking every section. What a nightmare,but I was over painting even then.

I love Painter for what it alows me to do. Having done it the hard way I feel like I've been set free.

Bravo! Well said! I am brand new here. I am a photographer and then became a digital artist as well. I do photo paintings. One reason I decided to include this into my services is that many clients really love the idea of having a moment I captured in my camera for them transfomed into art and signed by me. We are in an  age where photographers are having  more difficulty  selling their photography services as now anyone can go out and for a few hundred dollars buy a good digital camera and take pictures they are crazy about. More are finding less need to pay a photographer. So, I have decided to go a step further and offer anything I photograph to my clients as being transformed into art. You will find more and more photographers doing this.....another way to be unique in the public's eye and survive as a profession. By the way, I do all of my photo paintings partly by hand. I never just push the button in Painter and save the image when it stops. I do a lot of different things by hand before i save the image to make it unique.

I have avoided posting on this until now for several reasons but I think the overriding one was the bad experience I had when I posted two portraits I referred to as "real" portraits.  By real, I meant that they were not practice.  Little did I know that there is a whole terminology of which I had no clue!

Thankfully, several members came to my rescue but the whole incident left me a little shaken in my resolve but it shouldn't have.  I meant what I said at the time; If you can produce like results and save 75% of the time then from a businessperson's viewpoint, it only makes sense.  I have never once looked at someone's artwork and asked myself precisely HOW it was made.  I just appreciated the result for what it was.

That said, I also never claimed that I was or am the next Da Vinci.  I like many others, see a need and a reasonable way to fulfill it. 

On the other hand, I have found the ability to paint over to be a marvelous learning tool!  As I apply the brush strokes, I can see where the paint is wrong and as I gained confidence, I would spend more and more time adjusting the results much as what others have said.  The result is a blending of overpainting and artist input.  I have seen professional artists do exactly the same thing.  I am learning how to re-do the eyes, add catchlights and do what is necessary to idealize a portrait if that is what is required (think: bride!)

The bottom line is that overpainting can and will be used by people who have the talent to use it properly and creatively as well as those who don't.  Like any other endeavor, the market will choose what it likes and those who produce it will prosper.

Regards,

Steve

PS I am posting a painting I did awhile ago done from a photo I took last year over in the arwork area. It's a hybrid painting.  I hope you like it.

Well, paint-overs don't impress me much and I dunno if I'd call them 'art', but what's it matter. I guess there's technique involved.. And does technique mean the same as art? Who knows.

It is well documented that the Flemish painter, Johannes Vermeer, employed the camera obscura as a part of his technique. This camera-like device utilizes a lens to project a well-lit scene onto a frosted glass plate. Vermeer was a master painter and didn't rely on the camera obscura as a creative crutch. My guess is that he was entranced by the luminous image created by the lens. He utilized this unique look and employed it in his paintings. The art viewing public of the time marveled at this unique view of the world. Vermeer (and likely others) kept the camera obscura a well-kept secret in order to protect their technique.

Today, the digital camera file used as an underpainting in Painter is simply an extension of the camera obscura. It can be used as a jumping-off point to explore the synthesis of a new medium. I often refer to this synthesis as "dipping a paintbrush into a photograph". Who's to say that this is creative laziness on less than authentic art? It simply is what it is: the creative freedom to utilize whatever means necessary to express oneself.

There are certainly bad examples available in any form of art. For instance, bad examples of interpreted photographs are around. Unscrupulous individuals will attempt to pawn expressively interpreted photographs as authentic oil paintings. Situations like these can contaminate the waters of forward-looking forms of artistic expression.

The issue of artistic jealousy or protectiveness comes up, as well. Artists invested in traditional media can be antagonistic towards novel approaches that violate their sense of "how it's done". The terms "paintover", "overpainting" and "smudge painting" have a derogatory connotation indicative a protective posture.

As advocates of this emerging medium, the best approach is to brush this negativity aside and forge ahead. I prefer to describe this medium as expressive interpretation. The goal is to interpret the medium of photography into an expressively painted form, utilizing the vocabularies of both. Just as an oil painter expresses oneself through brushstrokes, so does the expressively interpreted photograph.

Personally, I'm long past these points-of-view. The admixture of two formerly incompatible mediums—photography and painting—represents for me an exciting fertile field ripe with possibility. I'm happy to plant my flag here.

-john

Welcome back John. So nice to see your smiling face again. You were missed. I hope all is now well with you and yours.

 I agree, it is still an art form.  I am learning Painter, I just got my software a few days ago.  I have been practicing on a quick clone tutorial.  There is certainly a lot of learning, and practice that go into it.  I am practicing, dogs, people and landscapes with this tutorial.  Some are really bad, some are pretty good.  I truly believe that anyone that is expressing their interpretation of art, a picture or an idea is valid.  They are the ones that put the brush strokes there, changed the original photo, gave it a life of it's own, to me that's art and every bit as good as someone with a tablet that draws freehand.  I would hope there is a place here for everyone's different talents to learn and grow. 

Jeannie:

I would hope there is a place here for everyone's different talents to learn and grow. 

Hi Jeannie,

There certainly is a place here at The PainterFactory for everyone to learn an develop both thier talents and skills.

Though I would love to see all Painter users learn to draw as I believe that knowledge put to use is the basis for any good final image and is soooo satisfying to have that much more control over our art work, I'll continue to support Painter users no matter how they wish to use the program, and strongly believe it's their right to decide what gives them pleasure and happiness.

Corel Painter and earlier versions released by Fractal Design and Metacreations have given me pleasure and contributed to my happiness for the past 14 years, and I've used all of Painter's features in each version since Painter 4 was installed on my computer in 1995.

I draw from scratch and have from early childhood (using both traditional media and, since about 1989, digital media), paint from scratch and have for many years (using both traditional media and Corel Painter and earlier Painter versions), sometimes employ Painter's Clone system (it can be used for much more than standard Clone painting), and will continue to use any method possible in Corel Painter. Why not when it's there to be used?

Just have fun and you'll be delighted with the happy accidents, surprise discoveries, and what you're able to accomplish while "just" having fun!

Jinny

"The terms "paintover", "overpainting" and "smudge painting" have a derogatory connotation indicative a protective posture."

 Quote - John Derry

This brings up an interesting sub-discussion. When you mix the mediums of photography and digital painting to create a "painterly" style image from your photographs, how do you describe your work? If the terms "overpainting" "smudge painting" and/or "paintover" indeed have a derogatory connotation as I would agree, then how do you represent your work when describing this particular method to others?

For instance when someone says how did you do that? Everyone kind of generally gets it, if you say oh thats an Oil Painting, or thats Acrylics, when applied to traditional mediums. With everything digital, especially paint overs, how does the artist convey and explain his methods on this particular style by summing it up in a few words, rather than explaining the process in length and thereby at times taking a defensive tone inadvertently. 

How does an artist who works in this style explain his/her work in a positive non-derogatory sense?

 Thre are a relative few number of people with wonderful artistic talent who can see things and easily put them on canvas.  I'm not one of them.  I am pretty good at photography and love to create artwork, mostly from photos.   When I take a photo and try painting over it, I often end up with a bunch of flat strokes that look terrible.   This is not a simple thing, so you have to develope a talent to make a decent picture even when using powerful tools.  I spend hours making my art and when finished, I am often proud of it (sometimes I delete it).   If I didn't have Painter and photo software (PSP X2) I might never have enjoyed this creation journey.  

If you start with a photo and your final product looks like a photo, then I would call it a photo (artistic, as it may be composed).  If it looks like art then I would call it art because it went through a process of creativity.   I have certainly seen artwork I drool over but then again I have seen art being sold for $1000's (or in some galleries) that a dog could have done better and I would not call art.  That makes me feel much better.

 I second everything that John Derry said.  When it comes to any form of art generated on a computer, there are always critics who try to claim its "not art".  To me, its the end result that matters, not the media used.  If someone creates a composition that is pleasing to the eye and people enjoy looking at-- in my book it's "art".  What makes good art is very subjective; when I visited the National Gallery recently and saw a urinal hanging on the wall of the comtemporary art gallery it gave me pause--but there it is in the National Gallery so who am I to say it's not art even though I don't particularly like or understand it.

We have similar difficulties in the 3D graphic world.  Some 3D purists believe that if a person creates pictures with preconstructed models then it is not "real" 3D art.  They insist that every object in the scene must be created from scratch my the artist--this is obsurd.  3D art is being used in everything from ads to book illustrations; some even are converted to a painted look by people using stock models--yet the way they are customized and lit makes the images unique and defintely personal. 

I recently visited a local art gallery over the weekend, and the son of one of owners is doing conventional painting and computer painting.  The man had a distinct style, and to be honest I couldn't tell, if she hadn't told me what was painted on a computer and what wasn't.

Photographers are doing great things with Painter.  It's really no different than in the old days when black and white photos were tinted; but now the  possibilities are endless.  People pay good money to have portraits done with photo bases.

I have always found conventional media challenging; 3D rendering, Painter and Photoshop have allowed me to express myself in ways I never could in the past.