Are paintovers digital art or photo manips?

Photo manips vs. freehand vs. digital painting...they're all invented catagories imo. It's all illustration in my mind *shrugs*.

I also think your time comparisons only work for that specific example and don't hold true consistantly. *thinks* Pablo Picasso was once asked how long it took to do a particular painting. He answered "my whole life." So maybe time isn't relevant anyway; art takes as much time as it takes.

This reminds me, to some extent, of my experience dealing with designers and developers of websites. People say things like "I would never use dreamweaver. I code everything in notepad." To which I say, "Good for you. I'm going to go actually get some work done now." I use dreamweaver. I use notepad, I use books, I use my head, I use everything and anything.

I was looking over Julie's portfolio on DA and saw poser, and manips, and free hand. Is anyone going to argue that she did manips and poser because she can't freehand? She used the medium that told the story, at least that's how I see it. Look at Mai's portfolio. Look at Roz's. Look at Picasso. Look at great cubists and abstract artists.

At any rate. I'm not on DA so perhaps I'm missing some of the dynamic. It's hard to catagorize art sometimes. I would say on the artist's end, there's nothing wrong with talking about how you got to your finished product (we'll leave off debate of 'is an artwork ever truly finished' for another time, I think). On the viewer's end, there isn't anything wrong with asking. And both sides can go into it with an open mind.

I feel like I'm talking a lot and not answering the question *laughs*. I don't care what people decide to label a particular piece and honestly I think sometimes the labels are used as a road to elitism. I think if I did more illustration I would shy away from such things just out of principle. I would also be glad to talk about how I got to the finished point...but if you ask be prepared for the whole story, or at least as much of 'my whole life' as I'm willing to tell :D.

ha :) well I would be said friend mentioned above. I asked the same thing on my DA journal and no one's touched it so I've been talking to Roz about it.

mostly because I have ... well had, before I started cleaning out, about half dozen pics I've completely painted over. I've always had them as photomanips because I painted right over the photo. When I first started posting them someone asked me why I put them in the pmanip section. It just seemed right because its in essence, tracing the photo and tracing the colors. Its how I learned and I am totally ok with it! Like Roz says, the end product is still fully appreciable and if I learned something in the process than goal met, and exceeded.

Its the misrepresentation that kills me. Some people will put paintovers in digital and they are over a photo and never say squat. I think those are the ones I rage over the most. It seems to be a growing trend that I am finding frustrating and I wonder about the root of it. It seems the only people they are really hurting are themselves. There was a manip'er I was watching that was putting more and more of her stuff into digital without stating what it was - and it was WILDLY popular. As time has been passing she's been progressively doing more of her own painting and unfortunately her quality has been declining and its bringing out a lot more strong critiques because they expected more from her. Eventually she had to shut down her comments entirely and I felt badly for her. But I also felt good that she was trying to reach more in her work and was hoping that the criticism wouldnt quash her drive and cause her to go back to straight paintovers.

The people I respect are those that take the time to delineate their process, which I think not only helps them but also helps other future artists learn. I think it gives people not only a place to start but something to work toward. I think that also sucks all the mystery out of it for people and makes pictures far less 'popular'. LOL but I am one more for teaching than one for being an artist of mystery :D

I am of two minds on it. I believe that if you painted directly over a photo and used it to trace the lines, even in the photo no longer shows then you need to call it what it is... which is a paint over or photo manip (since a paint over category doesn't exist )

The only exception I see to that is doll base making where it is almost universally assumed that the artist traced over some photo or drawing to make the base. While they probably should give credit for the artwork, and some do, most don't.

Calling the work freehand when it isn't or giving the impression that it is free hand when it isn't seems unfair to the stock artist whose picture was used in the piece as well as dishonest by trying to convince people that you are capable of freehanding some amazing stuff.

I think I would feel like an imposter of an artist if I were to try to fool people into believing I had done something I hadn't. I want to wow people with my art but it would be cheapened to me if they were amazed by it but believed it was something that it wasn't. There are some wonderful paint overs out there including Julie's and Wyked's; beautiful for their own sake and work that certainly took a long time to finish.

On the other hand... having personally just worked on a photo manipulation piece that was a paint over, and having it take longer than most everything else I do, it is a bit disheartening to hear nice manip, which to me conjures images of someone taking George Bush's head and splicing it onto the Rock's body or dancing kittens with Viking helmets. Perhaps photo manipulation is a very broad category that needs to be broken up into simple manipulation like combining images and using a few filters and into paint overs which can become complex pieces of art..

I'm still of the opinion that if a photo is used as a layer of the work - even if it's not recognizable - then the work is considered a photo manip. This is wholly different from using a reference which could be sitting next to the WIP, but never actually used for tracing, etc.

This is not to say I have anything against photo manips. Just as any other digital art, photo manips can be done well or poorly. Some of the most interesting digital art I've seen was used with a photo (or several) as a base. You could say the same about other mediums - graphite (pencil) can be stick figures or a fully-rendered portrait.

What makes a difference to me is whether the artist is honest about how the art was produced. Being misleading hurts the artist and those trying to learn from him/her. No, photo manips don't get as many faves and all that jazz on dA, but people trying to pass it off as something else only perpetuates the idea that photo manip is a lesser form of digital art.

/shrug I always thought of anything done using a computer as digital art ... So I guess I really dont have an opinion on it , I suck like that I guess lol. I'd have to auctually sit down and think about it for awhile. =X

yes! That is it so precisely!! See I think photomanips are their own art form and shouldnt have to be viewed as 'lesser'. I have my favorite manipers. There is one I know of that does some seriously whacked/disturbed images transposing body parts where they shouldnt go and putting common machinery parts in places... It makes you shudder but its damn good artwork and it really makes you think and you really get a gut reaction to it. I think anything well done can do this. But somehow people think because its less 'popular' makes it less of an art form. Like Poser well done is somehow less than 3D from scratch. I fought for that so hard I cant imagine trying to do that to someone elses work.

So maybe it is 'comment based' art that has me up in arms. I wonder sometimes if DA and other places like it have put some kind of false bar up there for people and they are rising (or falling depending on how you look at it) to it so they feel like they are liked. And I wish I could just reach out and headsmack people and explain.

I tend to get very philosphical lol. That's what you get when your education is split between art and psych I guess :D

I feel the same, Julie.

As for dA, it seems a lot of the site is driven by the mods and popularity. People want to be the Daily Deviation or fave of the day (not that I'm saying I wouldn't have a spaz attack if that happened to be my work one day) and the mods seem to tend to look down on any type of manip work. There may be individual mods who aren't so biased, but, as a whole, this is what I have seen in my experience.

So, revisiting this topic again since the issue seems to have surged back into the limelight. I can understand Julie's disdain for lack of integrity when 'mislabeling' art. TAC isn't a huge huge art board, but recently someone asked me how do I resist 'cheating' during the mafia.

Why, as the owner and a staff member, would I want to hurt the integrity of a hugely popular game? Run lovingly by Verileah, who would without a doubt, drive to my home and punch me in the face if I cheated? Honestly, for me, half the enjoyment of the Mafia doesn't come from possibly WINNING but from seeing members enjoy the hell out of themselves.

The purpose as the owner, I feel, is to encourage and lead a wholesome (yet slightly evil) example. Do I have art that is traced over or painted over? Oh hell yes. Do I use them here? No. Do I covet them? Like a prized cow, let me tell you. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with that type of art. It's a very good stepping stone in learning other techniques. There will always be copyright issues though and TAC does respect that. You'd be amazed on how quickly an artist will give permission to use manip'd pieces of their art.

www.sanguineaffliction.com

Check out the main page. I still have the email (well I did before reformatting =x ) from the artist who gave his permission, and thanks, to use his artwork, slightly altered, on the front of our RP Vampire board. He thanked me for asking first. Copyright will always be a touchy subject, but doing unto other's what you would have them do unto you is always a great philosopy.

It's about integrity and adhering to the rules set forth, regardless of how popular you think you'll be, who you are and what your skill is. Manip isn't a dirty word, in fact this board opened up having more screen manipers than any other medium. I dragged Saraquael and Kassy over and it encouraged a few to dabble in freehand. Us maniper's moved over to 3d cuz it's the hotness. =D But manipulation or paintovers will never be frowned upon. There is untapped art in every medium, quality art.

Just remember, it's about integrity. If you are truthful about your art, it will be true to you.

Paintovers are a grey as hell area. I won't go into the nitty gritty of classifying any of that though. I do believe that paintovers and tracing can be a valuable tool in the learning process if and ONLY if you plan on moving past it at some point to learn more. I think come people get too comfortable tracing and painting over that they stick with that. That is a huge disservice to yourself and the original artist.

The big question to really answer is this... if the original photo or work you're painting over were to be taken away from you... would you still be able to create a great piece of art by yourself?

While I'm on the subject of thins relating to paintovers and such.

Mixed media in art is using multiple artistic medium to create a piece... pastels and paints, ink and pencil, what have you. Tracing someone's work is really not mixed media... it's tracing. Now, like I said, tracing for muscle training or learning is fine. Tracing to steal someone else's work, poses, lighting and composition... a big fat no-no.

Now you may say "well, you can't copyright a pose or lighting " Yeah, that's true.. but it's still hacky. Not only are ganking someone else's work, you're making it harder on yourself because you just took the easy way out.

The problem with the internet and is that basically it becomes a popularity contest. Popularity and skill is not the same thing at all. People with no real knowledge of art and creation run rampant on boards spouting off inaccurate and sometimes idiotic advice that does nothing more than steer young artists in the wrong direction. All it really takes is the right words... they don't even have to REAL words... just make it sound right.

"I believe that centro-radiosity on the dynatharcic corner seems... erratic"

The inability to seperate style preference from real helpful critiques have also made some critiques a tad useless at times. I often wonder when these people get time to work on their art... I mean, how does one sit down when they have entire message boards patting their asses 24/7?

Back when I was in school, if you stole other people's work, you fail the course. It's cheating, and that's something that's tolerated. Of course, these days it looks like the art internet art realm can be as soft as a bag of marshmallows. Give a good enough reason for it and it's ok right? Well... as long as a majority of the others are doing it too.

If a man steals a loaf of bread to feed his family, that can be understandable. I guess if a man steals a loaf of bread to be popular, that's ok too now.

With all that being said, is someone who swipes work or constantly takes the easy way out creatively an evil person? No. In the grand scheme of things, they're just someone that makes poor choices.

But they sure as hell ain't an artist either.

I very much agree.

For true

I'm still touchy about paintovers being passed as digital art but I'm learning to ignore it... mostly :P

Personally I think tracing will only help you familiarize yourself with a medium. Pencil, pen, ink.. crayons.. digital paints. whatever. Whenever I bring out a new brush in painter I do three or four 'cloned' pics just to see if I like how the brush strokes work and blend. Just like when I was learning to control pencil lines I used to trace.

I dont think tracing teaches you how to draw. Freehand drawing encourages/trains your eyes to percieve and understand depth, relationships in space for angles, color and value. Tracing will do none of these things. If I need something to be precise I grid. Gridding still makes you make decicisions. Tracing takes away all your decision making. And in a lot of cases it hobbles you. People say 'I trace to check my lines'. Well there are a lot of ways to check linework that dont require tracing. Flipping your picture is an excellent spot check for example.

LOL on the tech-gibberish. I'm self taught. I know zippo of the technical terms. People start going on about the percieved parallells of the whatchamawhosits and the brain and I am just.. huh??? SPEAK ENGLISH! :)




this is a good thing to think on. You've made some very good points.