Tuesday, October 6, 2009

why the eye is superior to the camera and Sunrise on the Construction Site


8x10 pastel on watercolor on Uart paper
This view has stayed with me for awhile, sitting in my mind's eye. It's a difficult place to paint; constant construction vehicles, dust and people. I wanted to work on a bigger painting from this site and for me that means work on site to understand the landscape and light. Memory and plein air work will ALWAYS be better than any photograph for creating a painting.
Let me list the reasons:
1. Cameras only capture a limited value range. They especially wash out shadows.
2. The camera sees with one eye we see with two - the result is distorted shapes
3. Cameras and computers only work with 3 colors red, blue and yellow. The eye sees limitless colors.
Have I convinced you? It's usually easy to spot work done from only photos and yes it's ok to use photos as reference. All I am trying to say is trust your ability to create.

4 comments:

brian eppley said...

yes, good points. Congrats on your recent award. Excellent!

Double "D" said...

Loriann, you are wise beyond your years. I catch myself in the photo trap more than I like. I think for me it all started with 30 plus years of doing commercial illustration. Where the illustrator is only as good as his reference. Thanks for reminding me of this and to get me back outside to at least sketch what I'm seeing and only work from that as well as memory.
As always you inspire all the right things for me.
Thank you and congratulations on your award. How cool is that. Later Buddette,
Your painting buddy.

susan hong-sammons said...

I love how the sunlight seems to gently touch this valley and slowly brings the day. Your paintings truely speak more than words.

loriann signori said...

Thanks Brian.

Hey Buddy,
I am sure I am not telling you anything new. Coming from a fine art background and never having illustrated before, would you tell me more about "the illustrator is only as good as his reference?"
buddette

Hi Susan, Thank you for. your kind words. That's just the feeling I tried to create.