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I have drafted and now deleted three pretty long posts for this thread, because I have some strong feelings about the wisdom that Mr. Whitaker has offered. What the heck, here goes.
My opportunity to receive the training in the classical fundamentals was so far beyond my means and experience and ability that I worked in embarrassment, albeit very earnestly so, for years and yet will simply always feel blessed by it, even if I have made less of it than I might have. I paid a very high price for that opportunity, and only in retrospect can I say "gladly."
Fact is, most of the reference photographs I've seen on the Forum have been awful, sorry to have to say, though I don't often assume the role of curmudgeon here. And though those photos provided convenient excuses for the resultant flaws in the paintings, the fact is that the reference photographs revealed the (lack of) artistic sensibilities of the artist, not an aesthetic failure of the subject. If the artist had known what he or she was after, in terms of fundamentals, the photo would not only have likely been perfect, but it would have been unnecessary.
When I came on board the Forum many years ago, it was the case that even to admit you'd copied a photo was something you protected from disclosure. Now, a few competitive years later, we're proudly displaying our photography skills and our ability to copy those intermediary renderings.
I work for a publishing company whose competitor stole our editorial stuff for years, in the early Internet anything-goes days -- let's call that competitor the Smith Corp. -- and it happened that we produced a t-shirt with an image of a photocopy machine with the legend, "The Smith Editorial Department."
Sadly, that's the level that we're working at when giving up on life, on the real thing, and just copying an intermediate rendering already produced in another flawed, however instrinsically beautiful, medium. Nothing wrong with photographs, but you can't train your eye that way.
If one simply cannot find models -- family members, paid street urchins, kaffeeklatsch sipping buddies -- and, so, cannot proceed save by artifice . . . it may be best to stop. Many schools continue to offer degrees in accounting and archaeology, as well as studio art.
Or continue in portraiture, for the self-fulfillment of it. But don't wonder why your fiddle doesn't play Bach, while you go to book club. Or why the absence of a photograph leaves you completely unable to work.
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