[MoleculeMan]

First question: Are there any online photo-reference sites online?

Second Question: What's everyone's opinion on them??

Personally, i grew up thinking that people who drew from pictures were 'copying' but now i am starting to change my philosophy i guess. I see thier use, but someting in me cries out 'wrong!' heh. Oh well. Anyone wanna tell me more about them?

jake

[Gort]

Well I cannot answer your first question, but I can comment on your second one.

For the sake of learning, there is nothing wrong with copying other folks stuff - photos, illustrations, etc., but I want to emphasize "for the sake of learning". During college, I was told my several different professors to find an illustrator I like, take pieces of their work and put them on the wall. Start replicating their work. Now firsthand impressions might cry foul, but what's going on here is that your actually learning to use your medium of choice. Just don't try to pass off what you've copied as your own, original work - that's a legitimate cry for unethical practices. After a while, you'll find that you're actually learning the process involved in creating the work; once you've been successful, then it will be time to take that stuff off the wall and start exercising your own creative, original work.

Many famous illustrators, Norman Rockwell included, worked from photos and slides. There's nothing wrong with using photos as reference. If it's for commercial purposes, then make sure the photos are your own. If they're not, then make sure you follow the proper legal channels for usage.

[ October 25, 2001: Message edited by: Tom Carter ]

[ October 25, 2001: Message edited by: Tom Carter ]

[Jaymo]

Well, even copying a photo is hard, but using photo-reference should not mean to do that. You should use reference a lot to get a good idea and knowledge of proportions, materials and the like. You can extract details, color schemes and compositions etc. from a photo and put it to new use. E.g. take a portrait-photo and try to copy it, but do the face from a different angle. Get my point? No cheating in that. Yet it's always nice to say so, if you extensively used references.

Searching for images? Look no further:

• http://www.imagebank.com
  
• http://www.corbis.com
  
• http://www.tonystone.com
  

You don't have to buy pics just to use them as inspiration and reference for certain elements.

Even some search-engines sport an image-search:
http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/simage
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=de (funnily only the german google search seems to have picsearch ("Bildsuche"), so go figure)

[RoadMaster]

actually Jaymo, go to images.google.com for the english version of the image search, it's very useful in my opinion.

[edible snowman]

i really don't see whats wrong with copying photos either, as long as you're trying to understand what you're seeing. its a process that builds on itself, you start by copying, then you change things i.e. the lighting, angle, etc. and eventually you can come up with scenes out of your head. i think the most important thing about copying though, is that you really think about what you're doing when you do it. notice what forms and shapes there are, and how the light affects them. you learn a lot more than if you just try to make your painting look the same as the picture, although the results could turn out similar.

[Malachi Maloney]

Try www.DITTO.com

MDM

[MoleculeMan]

Thanks all, I really appreciate the responses! I am now officially swamped in pictures heh.

Jake

[Jaymo]

RoadMaster: Hehe, so that's were it is. Thx!

edible snowman: Of course! Didn't mean copying pics is wrong or cheating or something. Just wanted to state it's by far not the only thing to do with reference-pics.