Paul Wright - Face Painter
polycounter lvl 19
The step-through guides on Paul Wright's site contain some really good tips for skin/hair rendering in photoshop.
This one is especially good.
This one is especially good.
Replies
In short, wheres the artist? I wish he would show us original works so we can see how he decides color and shadow highlights on the faces forms versus just technical brush information to mimick.
oXY ... working closely from photo-reference does not invalidate the work. Artists learn to recreate the world by closely observing it ... even if the process is to closely recreate a photo. What an artist learns through the observation and recreation process carries through to work drawn solely from imagination.
It always cracks me up when I see tutorials go like this:
1) Rough out art.
2) Make art look good.
3) Make art look better.
But to be fair they are step-by-steps not really designed to teach but just illustrate benchmarks in progress.
Artistic masturbation.
oXY, he paints huge pieces with an airbrush and spraygun, as well as has done a bunch of freaky looking 3d monsters, the dude has talent. If that's artistic masturbation, I sure wish I could jerk off with half the talent he has!
I clicked the link and skimmed the tut quickly before thinking exactly what Oxy said. "Whats the point in that?" I know its artistic, and its useful to inform your imaginative illustration, but I dont see it as being "art" in and of itself, or at least not a very compelling piece.
Nor any of his stuff, although much of that is traditional media, which makes it slightly more impressive. But he's still ripping his subjects, lighting and composition essentially from another artist, in pretty much ALL of those cases, the photographer.
EDIT: I looked at his photography and he's got some decent work in there, as far as landscapes go. So, he's obviously got some creativity under the hood. I can tell from his carnival work that he composites multiple elements and creates compositions from them, which requires creativity and there's a lot of merit in that. Heck, I do that all day every day @ work. But...I guess Im just dissappointed in the lack of original imaginative illustration, and that somebody with this kind of rendering ability would use in purely on replicating somebody ELSE's art. Its the airbrush equivalent of all those kids making DBZ models.
I think we're just spoiled from being in such a creative industry that any time some talented dude comes along who can't paint an orc from scratch we think "LAME!"
I'm more than just a little inclined to say he's nothing more than a human printer, as scooby's mentioned before me.
edit:this was Pea!
Persi can't post this intelligently hahaar.
Edit: I just noticed that the guy has MANY pieces on his site NOT created from photo reference. So now he fits your description of a real artist.
Plus, correct me if I'm wrong but he made a bunch of 3d models in poser. Unless of course, making a 3d model from a reference isn't artistic either.
And if people are going to discredit his photo-ref work anyway, you have to discredit so many artists in the world that use live models. Being able to recreate what you see is also art.
Also: I looked pretty closely through his gallery. I didnt see ANY pieces that werent photo ref. Could you point them out?
Let me be clear, I DO like his work. He is clearly talented. I just question the worth of pure replication.
I was being a little sensationalist to say "he's not an artist, he's a human printer". I know and realize he's an artist and obviously a very talented one at that. I just would like to see more stuff drawn purely from imagination.
For me the ability to faithfully represent what I see is in service of my imagination, not THE purpose itself of my art.
Anyway, I hope this helps to clarify my position.
Drawing from a model at least takes some skill, but it is pretty much the same thing. If you need a model to produce a decent piece of art you just aren't as good an artist as someone who can produce the same result without reference.
The whole point of painting or drawing models, or working from photos, is that it's good practice. Being good at practicing and being good at doing are two totally different things.
All Im saying, I went with hopes of seeing something that could help me see an artist's process of dealing with faces. Instead, he could have switched that picture with one of a swimming pool with trees, and it still would have been much of the same process. Nothing stood out. The only good tidbit I got from his site was his discussion of airbrushes, and what he liked.
Edit. I would say though he is much more a artisan than a artist from whats displayed on the site I saw.
Ebagg (check american heritage definition)
I don't consider tracing art. This guy is obviously tracing (look at any of his first step drawings).
Drawing from a model at least takes some skill, but it is pretty much the same thing. If you need a model to produce a decent piece of art you just aren't as good an artist as someone who can produce the same result without reference.
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Wow.
You've basically slapped artists like DaZ in face as a bulk of his work are recreating human likeness.
By your definition, the great greek and roman sculptors and Renaissance masters are nothing more than hacks because all of their work was "copied" from what was around them.
I don't consider tracing art. This guy is obviously tracing (look at any of his first step drawings).
Drawing from a model at least takes some skill, but it is pretty much the same thing. If you need a model to produce a decent piece of art you just aren't as good an artist as someone who can produce the same result without reference.
The whole point of painting or drawing models, or working from photos, is that it's good practice. Being good at practicing and being good at doing are two totally different things.
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wow, that is absolute rubbish. by your tocken all the renaiisance painters are hacks because they didnt paint straight from imagination ? even rembrandt used references and models.
i am appauled that you would say something like that
Wow.
You've basically slapped artists like DaZ in face as a bulk of his work are recreating human likeness.
By your definition, the great greek and roman sculptors and Renaissance masters are nothing more than hacks because all of their work was "copied" from what was around them.
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Some renaissance artists were hacks who probably used photographic techniques to speed up their work flow. For Greek and Roman artsists; I just don't think they really used human models that much, since their output was so obviously stylized/idealized.
Even still, if you look at the art of someone like Rembrant, it is the quality of the paint surface and his way of glazing that make his art remarkable. These are basically technological innovations.
Pre-photographic art was mostly used to document things. It wasn't like the artists were trying to express their deep inner feelings.
Anyway. I suppose Daz himself would consider his art better if he could produce what he does without reference. So what?
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Hack
And is it really so controversial that artists are better now than ever before? Engineers are better. Doctors are better. Why not artists?
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For Greek and Roman artsists; I just don't think they really used human models that much, since their output was so obviously stylized/idealized.
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They used "golden" proportional systems and many roman sculptures where copies/practice of Greek originals. Greek was chic.
Vitruvious also played a part in roman ideals of proportions.
You've basically slapped artists like DaZ in face as a bulk of his work are recreating human likeness.
By your definition, the great greek and roman sculptors and Renaissance masters are nothing more than hacks because all of their work was "copied" from what was around them.
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Everyone knows that Daz didn't create those models; he had EA's Rototron 2000 to do all the work for him. I think he was there just to narrate the media videos in his swanky English accent.
This is an interesting topic, and it's fun to see people get so passionate over semantics. I think I come down on the same side of the fence as oXY with this one - there is a difference between an artist and an artisan.
An artist, who creates art, combines technical skill with some sort of aesthetic. Perhaps the word 'creativity' isn't correct, but a stylistic interpretation. Drew Struzan's art is nowhere near photorealistic, and even classic Italian painters played around with proportion (Parmigianino's Madonna of the Long Neck) and with light (the crazy chiaroscuro in Da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks). No one is mistaking those for photographs, and despite a definite realism, each artist has a distinct painterly style.
On the other hand, I see an artisan as a highly skilled craftsman - impressive technical skill is required, but not a particular aesthetic. A carpenter who carefully planes and saws wood to precise requiremens to build a table, he's an artisan. A metalworker who builds the tiny gears to blueprint accuracy for a wristwatch, he's an artisan. The digital content creator who creates his work without deviating from explicit source guidelines? He's an artisan.
In fact, I don't think it matters if a creator is working from something real or fantastic. Take a texture painter wh is tasked with creating metal texture for a futuristic spacecraft. If he's really playing with a fantastic style, imparting his own appreciation of hue and light and shape, he's made a distinctly personal contribution. If he creates a hyper-accurate texture of diamond plate steel, indistinguishable from a photograph, he's made a replica - he's a pair of hands performing technical skills, something that requires no interpretation.
I don't think many dictionaries are going to agree with my assessment, and I got into more than one heated discussion about this in college as my definition also excludes Jackson Pollack, Marcel Duchamp and even Piet Mondrian if I'm feeling particularly argumentative. They have the aesthetic and interpretive part down, but little or no technical skill was involved in creating their most famous works. I have a few terms to describe these creators as well, and 'fraud' is probably the most polite of them
On the matter of Daz's Bond characters... strictly speaking for direct replicas, nope, I don't consider that art. On the other hand, I believe some of the Bond versions were intended as amalgams of multiple Bonds (and thus not a clone of one specific actor) and that definitely does require an artistic interpretation. So sometimes art, sometimes not. While Daz is an artist, this doesn't mean that everything he creates is therefore art, and I doubt he'd disagree with me on that. In the same vein, maybe Paul Wright is an artisan who sometimes does create art. The content and the creator aren't inseparable; every aspiring playwright who has hacked out a technical document to pay the bills, every would-be sculptor who casts a few thousand identical plates for yuppie dinnerware, every future chef who has worked as line cook making tonight's orders of haricots verts taste the same as last night and the night before... They aren't necessarily making art every time they set their hands to a task, but that doesn't mean they aren't artists.
American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source new! art·ist (ärtst) Pronunciation Key
n.
One, such as a painter, sculptor, or writer, who is able by virtue of imagination and talent or skill to create works of aesthetic value, especially in the fine arts.
A person whose work shows exceptional creative ability or skill: You are an artist in the kitchen.
One, such as an actor or singer, who works in the performing arts.
One who is adept at an activity, especially one involving trickery or deceit: a con artist.
Oooo found one definition thus far that says creativity is optional!
This guy has SKILL, paintings like that you can't just "paint by numbers" and get works as near photo real as this guy, ESPECIALLY if he's using a airbrush! And omg, sometimes he traces the main features before goin in and painting, that's not cheap. That's like saying using a front and side view is cheap in 3d because you're overlaying your model on top of a reference!
This guy has great skill at what he does, and he is an artist in that sense.
Instead of trying to elarn anything to it your guys are more worried on saying "oh , its not art so ..."
And as for matching a likeness in 3d vs 2d? WORLDS of difference there. When sculpting a 3d likeness of a person you cannot just trace. Now if Daz were taking 3d scans and more or less just cleaning them up & retopologizing them, that would be akin to what this guy does. But no, he creates them from scratch using reference, which is worlds away from directly copying.
I wasn't comparing that to 3d, I was saying his first step of lineart tracing the main features of his subject is akin to using a rotoscoped imagine to make sure your 3d model matches the proportions of the concept.
As johny said, who cares? The dude airbrushes bigass displays with lots of celebrities on them. Maybe he doesn't want to be some amazing concept artist or make humans from scratch. He does his job and does it damn well, he's skilled. And if sculpting a 3d likeness is artistic, well it sure looks like he's done a ton of those in poser! Look around his site a bit!
Well ,here's is my photosourcing work -
(paint over , filtres , color balance, saturation etc. etc. etc.)
Artist ?
Artisan ?
If I have to decide it now for this thread - I feel closer to the Artisan , cause I'm not pretentious and I'm honest with myself
I think that there's a some artists whose use "photosourcing" but they don't confess anyway.
That's the secret professional - "BIG KNOW HOW".
the result final
... feel free use it as the reference or even the base of a skin.
Why are we still discussing wether this is an artist or not?
LOOK at that.
Okay, so i'm being somewhat tongue-in-cheeck here, but still.
And there's a world of difference between photosourcing and tracing, can't we just all agree on that? And dizzy, this is a modelsheet, something to be used in the entertainment industry. While game/film-assets can most certainly be art, it's an industry in which the end often justifies the means . And even then, that's not what we're discussing here. Based on his tracingwork i could never call this man an artist. And bringing in the old masters is entirely different still, because those often brought their own touch and style to the work, and also, they drew from LIFE. There was a need for that back then. They weren't reproducing something that was reproduced from life by something that makes what they do meaningless. I'm not against doing studies by any means though, don't get me wrong (and one can debate the use of these particular ones), but as i stated before, i can't call him a particularly inspiring artist based on that. And if we look at what he did ' creatively' (beginning of my post) , then i think the discussion ends rather soon.
And now i'm going to have a bit of a liedown, since i've got a migraine. OMG TMI.
edit: oh, it's ' image' nowadays, rather than img, n'est-ce pas?
I look at it in a slightly different way, I dont ask myself the question is it art or not, its impossible to pin down the definition of art nowadays, Mr. Wright could argue that by using his method of directly copying using technology to get the forms volume and colour, he is subverting the traditional techniques of painting and drawing, the use of figure study, perspective and colour theory. Breaking the rules of predecessors has always been a particular favourite of the next generation of artists. But sadly the rules have been broken long ago and while his arguement is valid it has little or no merit in breaking the same rules again. And this is the question we should be asking how much artistic merit does this method and its product have. The product a digital hyper real portrait, when I first saw it my reaction was, why doesnt he just take the original photograph and apply some PS filters to change the image slightly ? For me thats all the value it has, not much. As for the medium, (digital painting), hes not really going in directions that havent been previously explored, hes not using the medium to its fullest potential or to push the medium into directions in terms of its use, to make it stand out, so that people see the work and say wow this is different, or wow this is special because it cant be done in other mediums.
But screw all that, nevermind what anyone else thinks, Im wondering what satisfaction does Mr. Wright get from doing such work? Personally I cant see much sense of achievement in any of it, as a straight copy hes imbued the products of his time with so litle of himself, in thought or emotion and I cant see how he derives any satisfaction from it. Theres other things that I do think but will not say as they are fairly controversial points and some on here are fond of hissy fits and its not worth the bother....
I hate the Dadaism too ... lol :P
EDIT: LOL @ pic on pea's post.
joking aside, i see that as practice for colour theory, and facial anatomy it has merit, but tracing is along long way off from life drawing.transfering what you see into a 2d image takes a load more skill knolegde and interpretation than tranfering from one image to the next.
=P
The Oxford English dictionary, cites broad meanings of the term "artist,"
A learned person or Master of Arts.
One who pursues a practical science, traditionally medicine, astrology, alchemy, chemistry.
A follower of a pursuit in which skill comes by study or practice - the opposite of a theorist.
A follower of a manual art, such as a mechanic.
One who makes their craft a fine art.
One who cultivates one of the fine arts - traditionally the arts presided over by the muses.
(referenced from: C. T. Onions (1991). The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Clarendon Press Oxford. ISBN 0-19-861126-9.)
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Thats what i found from wikipedia.
the guys a freakin artist
My humble intention was just to point out some pretty cool techniques for rendering skin and hair - always useful.
After all that hand wringing on the nature of what an artist is and so forth, you might like to explore the site a bit more. He's got some great airbrushed stuff.
I'm not sure if this has been meantioned yet or not. But for those of you saying "this is not art, he is not an artist...", what about people who model directly from photos such as ones on http://www.3d.sk/. I've seen several examples of people, on this forum, using photos of celebrities to create likeness in 3D form. They're not just looking at the photo, but taking the front/side photos and...essentially tracing in 3D. I've not seen/heard anyone talk down to people that do this in 3D...so what makes it any different than what Paul Wright does?
Anyway, I addressed the 3D issue when mentioning Daz's work on the 007 games. If it's a deliberate photorealistic replica, it's not art.
I traced it, BUT I ADDED CAT EARS. CAT EARS = CREATIVE.
While I don't exactly believe that the end result that Wright produces is art I think that the process he gets involved in while doing it is extremely challenging and mentally fulfilling in itself. I think that is, indeed, the reason why he posts stepbysteps. The process appeals more to me more than end result - and its actually quite cool to look at these series of images in reverse order.
I tried to do this kind of tracing a long time ago (I was copying a picture using picked colors, no line guides tho) and I still have a very clear memory of the process because it was so absorbing. Painful and fun in the same time, how weird is that.
Also I think there is more to learn in terms of color usage and painting skills from this :
http://www.wrightair.co.uk/digital/zatstep/images/zat01-03.jpg
than from this :
http://www.wrightair.co.uk/digital/zatstep/images/zat01-10.jpg
I'd definately keep some of his work as a reference. But mostly the ones showing uniform skin rendering (very good skin texture references imo) rather than the cheesy airbrush-looking ones.
On a related subject : I think I have a big problem with the use of the words 'art' and 'artist' themselfes and I think that making a distinction between 'artist' and 'artisan' is a very simplistic way to try and close the debate.
I believe that whether a piece (picture, sculpture, music... or video game model) is art or not - and in the same way, whether the person behind it can be called an artist or not - depends on both the inner feeling of the person producing it, and the specific feel of the viewer at the time he sees, feel or reads it.
In my opinion these two factor alone (and I leave prettyness outside of the debate here) are enough to make for an extremely complex range of possible meanings and interpretations. Hence, do we really need tags and definitions?
EQs portrait is great. If it is based on a person he knows I am sure that the picture pleased her a lot. It brought a smile to my face and I am glad for this!
I remember seeing the documentary on "The Punisher" DVD where he was discussing his process on creating the artwork it was originally traced.
Craig Mullins traced his photo reference on teh Wolfenstien cover, he posted the ref images and final images over at sijun along time ago. It just a base. It's still art. It's the final product you are looking at that is considered art, not the journey to get it.
If you have issues with it, it can only hurt your career if that other person is willing to do it and you are not.
/shrug
http://www.goodbrush.com/cpg146/thumbnails.php?album=11
Craig took a photo of the guy holding a broomstick as a gun and used that as his reference it's not something new.
Rent "The Punisher" and check out the extras, I think people have just been told tracing is bad all their lives they look down on it, it's just another tool, not necessarily a crutch.
People said using computers to do art was cheating to at one time.
I think being an artist is a lot like being a child molester. You don't have to make art every day to be an artist. You only have to do it once, and you are an artists from that point on.
That said, tracing and color picking is nothing more than paint by numbers. If you want to call that art, then fine, but it has to be some damn shitty "art". Why? Because it seems to me that the perfect artist would be able to create whatever he wanted, as stylized or photo realistic as he cared, instantanously in whatever medium he had (given the limits of the medium) without any help from references.
I mean, if you really believe that the artist can only be judged by the final image, then you would have to say that a photographer is as good an artist as a painter who can make from memory a painting that looks the same as the photo. That just seems retarded to me. One requires pushing a button. The other requires a lifetime of practice.
You can call me a ball-licker, or a dumb twat but the fact of the matter is that I laugh at so called "artists" who can't draw a spaceship or a dragon simply because they don't have a reference image to trace. In that case being a ball-licker is a lot better than being an artists because I can do shit those fools have no chance of doing.
And ask any artists who does both. Drawing from life and from imagination are two totally different things with vastly different techniques. You don't need to understand perspective, color, or how light works to do life drawing. You just need to be able to see what's there and measure it out and get the angles and colors right.
You have to do do the copying before you can do it from memory so you are going to always see real artist doing things that don't seem like art. These are called studies.
So the reality of the situation is that you can't tell if it was a robot, or an artist, or a ball-licker who made a particular image, and even seeing the process you can't tell, since it is just one example. You have to look at everything the person has done and then maybe you can judge.
But I can say for sure that the image at the top of this thread isn't what I would call art. I would call it tracing.
I mean, if you really believe that the artist can only be judged by the final image, then you would have to say that a photographer is as good an artist as a painter who can make from memory a painting that looks the same as the photo. That just seems retarded to me. One requires pushing a button. The other requires a lifetime of practice.
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Woah Ninja. Have you taken any photography classes? It is alot more challenging and intensive than you think. They have to think of technical things like fstops while trying to think artistically in the realm a shot in time and even how they process the film. Its really a very intensive life long goal just like a painter. Cmon, even Piss Christ has some merit artistically.
Dekard, there seems to be confusion here between reference, and not even that. All artist use reference in some form or another. But then simply copying straight a photographic work is a study. It shows nothing other than process. Unless the artist was doing so intentionally per to make a statement.
It also leads into a issue many people confuse. Photographic imagery IS NOT REALISM. It's photography, a flat image that lacks the true human viewpoint. Something again and again I see mistaken in hollywood and video games.
Why also is there this idea of elitism rising between one or the other? Why can't we be both? Why are people continually misreading the thread to see this? (Well ok, Ninja being the flashpoint
http://www.punisher-art.com/artists/bradstreet/bradstreet.htm
Here's the discussion I started on Sijun about it a couple years ago..
http://forums.sijun.com/viewtopic.php?t=38234&highlight=
edit: by the way I was wasted when I wrote that, pretty good eh?