Comments on: Tools of the trade http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/ Strategies for Internet citizens Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:45:11 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: LeMel http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-66618 Fri, 28 Sep 2007 01:17:26 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-66618 A few points…

1) If it was possible at that time to use optical instruments to create more lifelike paintings, then at least one person did so. I’d assume a few.

2) Were any of the ‘masters’ included in that group? Analysis can help reveal. But, at least the wealthier of them could have afforded the creation of the custom instruments. Maybe they deserve the most scrutiny. Were the poor, disrespected impressionists perhaps also technological reactionaries?

3) Beware cultural-recency bias; folks back then may not have viewed using instruments as being necessarily suspect. While we, with our abundance of technologies, have developed a great sentimentalized nostalgia over hand made objects. How could one now, in hindsight, apply the heavily-hijacked word ‘authentic’ – not so long ago, anything made by humans at all was ‘authentic’!

]]> By: Josh Gentry http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-63278 Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:42:48 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-63278 My wife, who is a professional artist, read the book and found it convincing. But putting aside whether it is correct or not, the first thing I think about when reading about this controversy is the attitude some folks have about artists using photographic references. Somehow it is cheating? My wife makes some salient points about why anyone who simply copies a photo does not produce good art. Photographs distort images in characteristic ways, and also do funny things to value. Compresses them, I think. What looks good in a photo might not look good as, say, a watercolor. To produce a good picture from a photo reference, you still have to have skills and creativity. Same with using optics to project an image onto your canvas.

]]> By: Ffej http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-63191 Wed, 19 Sep 2007 01:01:18 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-63191 “The art world says yes, it is cheating and does cheapen the work…” This is the same art world that worships Warhol? Remember all those lovingly traced and transfered Campbell’s soup cans and Brillo boxes? Same artworld that’s constantly driving up the prices of his serigraphs–silk screened prints that his employees made in his name? I wouldn’t worry too much about what the art world has to say: it’s fickle, fadish and trite. And it will deny saying it later.

]]> By: Mike Caulfield » Blog Archive » On Hockney, mathematicians, and the cross-cultural fallacy http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-63016 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:32:30 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-63016 [...] Udell, a link to a paper that attempts to refute David Hockney’s theory that the sudden shift to [...]

]]> By: Gavin.B http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-63004 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:21:48 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-63004 oops slight corrction!
That is one of the papers the Cambridges UK Lab that did
_not_ involve Criminisi.

]]> By: Gavin.B http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-63002 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:18:35 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-63002 If you Criminisi’s stuff take a look at the Digital Tapestry work he did with Andrew Blake (supervised a PhD for me!)

http://research.microsoft.com/vision/cambridge/papers/carrot_cvpr05.pdf

]]> By: Bart Schutte http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-62900 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:03:43 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-62900 Correction to 5. I typed too quickly. In the last line I meant to say that capturing the forms is NOT importantant in distuinguishing an intriguing painting from a dull one.

]]> By: Bart Schutte http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-62899 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:00:55 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-62899 As every struggle artist knows, the challenge in painting is not the shapes and the forms. The challenge is the interpretation. And right behind interpretaion is the choice of subject, angle, perspective for the painting. Sadly, I spend hours and hours on these issues. Capturing the forms, whether by hand or by tracing, is a relatively quick process and important in distinguising an intriguing painting from a dull one.

]]> By: Tools of the trade at aoortic! dot com http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-62277 Sun, 16 Sep 2007 16:40:03 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-62277 [...] Original post at Jon Udell [...]

]]> By: echovar » Blog Archive » Cheating in Art, Engelbart's Vision http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-61923 Sat, 15 Sep 2007 17:05:13 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-61923 [...] Jon Udell writes about David Hockney’s book “Secret Knowledge.” The crux of the dispute is: did the master painters of the renaissance use mirrors, lenses and camera obscuras to trace the forms that they use in their paintings. And if they did, does that constitute “cheating.” And if it is cheating, does that in some way reduce the value of the work? Udell approaches the discussion from a technical point of view, looking at research by computer scientists to determine if the line work has the regularity of something traced, or if there’s sufficient irregularity to deem the work “human.” [...]

]]> By: Mark Armendariz http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-61770 Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:47:31 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-61770 Just as with art, we build upon the shoulders of the many far more intelligent or at least far more specialized than ourselves. Tracing can be cheating if one were to produce a traced image sans modification as a freehand piece of work, but it’s the artist’s perspective based upon what was borrowed that makes the work of art.

To claim originality specifically because every stroke was original would be to claim that those strokes were not once learned. We learn by tracing, even if indirectly.

An experienced artist or programmer knows they can get the shape of things correct because experience dictates the shape of things. Tracing from memory. But why waste time drawing that which we’ve drawn hundreds of times when those shapes are already provided?

Otherwise, my experience with those angry with those who are willing to trace are mostly projecting from their own lack of creativity.

]]> By: Michael Buckbee http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-61613 Fri, 14 Sep 2007 21:12:21 +0000 http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/09/14/tools-of-the-trade/#comment-61613 I run Fabjectory – http://www.fabjectory.com – (where we use rapid prototyping machines to make cool objects for people), and I get a couple emails a week from people with different “crazy” requests for things to be fabbed.

One week I had an extended conversation with an artist in the UK who was trying to learn classical marble sculpture. His basic idea was that sculptors learn by creating copies of the great masters works and that many of these great works of sculpture are in private collections; to which there is limited access.

He wondered if it would be possible to scan in one of these sculptures and then have a 3D replica made? (short answer: possible, not practical).

However, this raises a third option to what you’ve laid out in your post. That in the same way that the Internet has acted as an accellerant on all the different fields of information exchange and learning, that optical reproduction techniques could have acted as a similar catalyst to the techniques of the 15th century.

As to the contextual question: don’t tell the photocopier artists – http://www2.parc.com/csl/members/bern/copyart.html – that it isn’t art.

- Mike

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