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Kidding aside, here's a card worth sliding into the index file for after-the-fact consideration -- what percentage of submissions, and of awardees, of the Portrait Society's annual competition were produced from photographs?
Yet that may not be instructive, because at that level, even those artists are undoubtedly capable of painting from life, and so the photo references are capitalized upon as an edge rather than a crutch. One of last year's honoree works was in fact earlier presented on this Forum as a presumably hopeless reference photo, which was alchemized into precious metal.
But that's the ether breathed at an altitude different from that which I think many members are talking about in these threads, which is the level of training one's eye, one's sensibilities. I think the misgivings are being expressed about the short-circuiting of the development of aesthetic musculature. We're becoming content with being artistic wimps, while machines do the work.
Are those voices in the wilderness we hear? Probably. Is it too late? Probably. How many of us have lately witnessed the triumph of tradition in any aspect of our lives? (And when we do, that alone becomes the subject of celebration, it is so rare.)
Computers and robots build cars now, a natural progression from Henry Ford's assembly-line paradigm. Soon it will be likewise in rendering likenesses in whatever medium you choose.
But there will probably also always be a source, a place, a practitioner, about whom people in the know will say, "You've got to come see this person's work. The studio's hard to find, but you have to come with me and talk to him [or her]. There's nothing else going on anymore quite like it."
It may be enough to resolve to be the artist they're talking about.
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