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Chock · 10 October 2009, 10:29 AM

If an artist wants to trace bits off another picture or photograph, fair enough, but I think I'd make a point of taking the old adage: 'the secret of creativity is concealing your sources' to heart if I was ever going to indulge in it myself. Perhaps more crucially, I'm always aware of another important artistic consideration whenever I do an illustration...

One of the few aviation paintings I have ever bought, which is on the wall in my front room, is 'Coming Home' by Trevor Lay. It's actually not a particularly accurate profile of the Spitfire Vb it is supposedly portraying - the angle of the dorsal area looks wrong, sloping at a slightly 'off' angle - but it is nevertheless a wonderfully striking painting, and as I previously noted, I'm very much of the opinion that a painting is not meant to be a photograph, but something which evokes an emotional response of some kind. That painting certainly does it, and that's why there is a signed print of it on my wall, it being a good example of why I'll take an inspired bit of painting over millimetre-perfect tracing any day of the week.

Anyone who has ever sketched a Spitfire from life will confirm that it is easy to get it looking wrong, but sometimes the overall result can be right, even if the dimensions are not. I once got really lucky when sketching a Spitfire from right underneath the nose of it (coincidentally it was also a MkVb) - the perspective giving it a really 'wide angle' appearance that looks fantastic as the nose and prop blades loom overhead, but I know that was just one of those days where the pencil seemed unable to go wrong and was an occasion where I had the entire thing drawn in one sitting in a strangely empty Manchester Air and Space Museum one dusty afternoon, that being on a day when I was bunking off from art college years ago! Lucky days like that aside, as I know, and indeed as pretty much any artist will tell you, when you initially sketch out a drawing, it's often the case that something of the initial magic gets lost when you start tickling it up for a finished piece. The aforementioned Coming Home picture is one of the few I've seen that manages to avoid it in a finished piece, and for me it's a object lesson on how ploughing your own furrow and sticking with the original thing you got when you put pencil to paper can do the business despite dimensions not always being to spec. That's really where the art is a lot of the time.

Al

10 October 2009, 10:29 AM	#20 (permalink)
Chock Scout Pilot Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The grim north of England Posts: 405	If an artist wants to trace bits off another picture or photograph, fair enough, but I think I'd make a point of taking the old adage: 'the secret of creativity is concealing your sources' to heart if I was ever going to indulge in it myself. Perhaps more crucially, I'm always aware of another important artistic consideration whenever I do an illustration... One of the few aviation paintings I have ever bought, which is on the wall in my front room, is 'Coming Home' by Trevor Lay. It's actually not a particularly accurate profile of the Spitfire Vb it is supposedly portraying - the angle of the dorsal area looks wrong, sloping at a slightly 'off' angle - but it is nevertheless a wonderfully striking painting, and as I previously noted, I'm very much of the opinion that a painting is not meant to be a photograph, but something which evokes an emotional response of some kind. That painting certainly does it, and that's why there is a signed print of it on my wall, it being a good example of why I'll take an inspired bit of painting over millimetre-perfect tracing any day of the week. Anyone who has ever sketched a Spitfire from life will confirm that it is easy to get it looking wrong, but sometimes the overall result can be right, even if the dimensions are not. I once got really lucky when sketching a Spitfire from right underneath the nose of it (coincidentally it was also a MkVb) - the perspective giving it a really 'wide angle' appearance that looks fantastic as the nose and prop blades loom overhead, but I know that was just one of those days where the pencil seemed unable to go wrong and was an occasion where I had the entire thing drawn in one sitting in a strangely empty Manchester Air and Space Museum one dusty afternoon, that being on a day when I was bunking off from art college years ago! Lucky days like that aside, as I know, and indeed as pretty much any artist will tell you, when you initially sketch out a drawing, it's often the case that something of the initial magic gets lost when you start tickling it up for a finished piece. The aforementioned Coming Home picture is one of the few I've seen that manages to avoid it in a finished piece, and for me it's a object lesson on how ploughing your own furrow and sticking with the original thing you got when you put pencil to paper can do the business despite dimensions not always being to spec. That's really where the art is a lot of the time. Al __________________ Wiseman: When you removed the book from the cradle, did you speak the words? Ash: Yeah, basically. Wiseman: Did you speak the exact words? Ash: Look, maybe I didn't say every single little tiny syllable, no. But basically I said them, yeah.