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Historically, artists have painted from live subjects. They either posed their subjects for
hours at a time in a studio while they measured, sketched and transferred to canvas a
reasonable facsimile of animate or inanimate objects, or they took their sketchbooks,
paint and canvas out into Nature to copy a landscape under specific conditions of
natural light.
Many artists, especially some of the great realistic painters, who had access and the financial
means incorporated camera obscura techniques into their tools of the trade. Transferring
images assisted artists in obtaining both realistic perspective and proportion.
The Music Lesson (Perhaps a painting from photographs?)
There is compelling evidence to indicate that the great Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)
probably used a camera obscura to block out his famous oil portraits, a device that does not in
the least diminish the greatness of his talent as a painter.
From da Vinci to Michaelangelo to Warhol, artists have used pantographs,
projectors, and various forms of optical devices to enlarge or transfer images. The earliest
record of a description of the principles of camera obscura can be found in an optical treatise
written by Islamic scientist, Al Hazen, who died in Egypt in 1098 so it’s clear that lenses and
photographic principles were available to many artists utilizing their scientific curiosity
throughout the centuries that followed.
In modern times, digital photography and the Internet have been combined to
allow anyone with a hankering for a genuine oil painting of their favorite person or scene to
own an original work of art, or painting from photographs. There’s no ‘cheating’ involved;
real artists apply real paint to real canvases and produce genuine works of art.
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