(01-10-2025, 02:34 PM)darktiste Wrote: Hi.Sorry to inform you but the picture you provided is broke i suggest learning to post picture in here instead of relying on external website for the future.
As for using master work for light by personal take it that it not really about what someone did but understanding the different scenario it rather comparing master to inform your decision because you are in between A vand B because you can neither be A or B . You can't extract pattern of ''success'' or logic by isolating one artist there as to be a separation it that information that inform you about deliberate vs none deliberate decision making. For example why does the cast shadow fall opposite to the sun and why do successful artist understand that and utilize that concept to create realism. A rule come from accurate understand the interrelation of different concept via repetitive recontextualize of those rule under different scenario. By understanding the variable of the equation it no longer and abstract and naive observation but a increasingly inform understanding of the interelation of those different variable.
Yes you can compare an artist against itself but how will you know if he not misinforming you after all if you look at master before perspective was establish they did not properly understand the rule yet people would follow there misguided masterful work because it what was understood at that time. But it by comparing work from yesterday with work of to day artist that we can establish who is right and who is wrong.
As for recontextualizing someone else artwork that a step up from copying. But why not try to do that scene from a different perspective, change the time of the day, change the time period there is many way you can recontextualize a work without simply doing 1+1 but something doing the 1+1 is the clearest and safest way to experiment without giving yourself more than you can chew.
There even other concept such as caricature or doing the opposite of what you see that expand how you think. Going beyond copying and adding there concept such as subtracting ,multiplying, dividing, grouping, separating, fusing, reducing, shifting hue to name a few.
Hey, darktiste, thank you for telling me about the broken images, they should work fine right now.
As per your note on the usefulness of these exercises, in my opinion, isolating an area of study and working on it while other fundamental areas are not causing you trouble is a good way to learn. In this example of work that I posted, I have deliberately chose to practice my lighting and not focus on things like composition and, say, perspective. Other exercises help you with isolating other fundamentals. The best examples of that would be anatomical studies where you are focusing on the internal machine of a human being, and even figure drawing, a very close subject, does not really interfere with your exercise.
On the point of misinformation I wanted to say that misinformation happens in most circumstances while learning art as art is not an exact science. I would call it interpretation rather than misinformation because we are dealing with how people perceive and feel and that always lies beyond the scope of objective truth.
I am also not very convinced that masters of the past are in some way wrong about things even though they didn't have all the knowledge of the present. Of course, I would not learn about anatomy and perspective from artists of the Northern Renaissance, but I cannot say that what they were doing is in its entirety wrong. I, as a realist painter, have different goals than them, but I am no more right about things than they are. Again, we are dealing with art where intention and direction matter more than pure factual knowledge of things.
Lastly, re-contextualizing matters but it matters more what your goal is for any given exercise. You do not want to change too much about a master's work because then the point of making a master study is no longer there. A master study, in my opinion, is a puzzle you are trying to solve by mimicking and analyzing what another artist did. There are paintings that contain answer to most of your questions, but asking that question and completely understanding the answer is the hard part. I do not consider copying hard anymore, at some point when you have been painting enough, repeating the same stroke and same colors on canvas is no longer a challenge, but what is definitely a challenge is the act of deciphering the information that is embedded into a masterful work of art.
