Painting From Photographs: How To Achieve More Realistic Results

Forget that old saying about how "the camera never lies," because the truth of the matter is, it does. Cameras distort and flatten images, and when you work from photographs, you must learn how to correct and adjust for these distortions if you want your artwork to be closer to how the human eye sees.

Wide-angle lenses can make tall buildings bend and warp all out of proportion. Flash photography or strong photographic lighting flattens the features of the human face. A camera can take a photo with a level of detail and sharpness far beyond typical human perception. Colors also can loose their natural vibrancy and interaction with the eye. These are all some of the ways in which, when we paint from photographs, our works can be affected and end up looking like a photograph instead of "real life."

The image shown above is a painting I created just when I was beginning to take art classes, yet before I had really studied art theory, anatomy and classical realism extensively. It was painted from a photograph, and what are some of the photographic flaws? My facial anatomy is not perfect, as the strong lighting used on the central figure obscured and confused facial planes and I had not yet studied anatomy enough to realize this. The jacket, which many people complemented me on for the high detail, is too strongly contrasted and lacking in real volume and depth. Also, the figure is entirely drawn in precise detail with sharp edges. As one instructor told me, "There are no sharp edges in nature" - and that includes the human figure. Even the way the background is completely blurred while the foreground is in complete sharp focus is typical of photo-realism, where either everything is shown in sharp focus, or one object is tightly focused upon while everything else is a blur. This is still a painting I like, but it is certainly photo-realistic, not classically realistic in style and execution.

The image here is another portrait, again done from a photograph but after I had spent a great deal of time studying realistic painting techniques. You can read more about the steps used in painting this picture in my tutorial "Paint a Portrait Like a Renaissance Old Master." But let me point out some of the ways this picture differs from the previous portrait painting:

1. Blurred Edges. Notice how, while some objects in the foreground may be in sharp focus, most of the rest of the painting blends softly to create a more natural look. Sharp lines and edges are softened to create the feeling of a figure turning and receding into the background. Facial planes blend smoothly into hair lines, neck or shadow.

2. Greater Sense of Volume. Even though, again, this figure is dressed in a costume with great detail, notice how there is more of a sense of volume and depth. The side in shadow feels more as though it is turning away from the viewer. Individual metallic pieces on the costume have different overall values of light and dark, indicating their orientation and reflection of light. These effects were achieved by forcing myself to look at overall values and forms first, before being distracted by detail as often emphasized in photographs.

3. More realistic facial structure. Although I was again working from a photo where the camera had "flattened" the facial features, I filled in missing details through my understanding of the bone structure and musculature underneath the skin.

4. Better color usage. Whereas a photo can bleach out strong color, leaving areas of flesh near white, that is not the case in natural light and how the human eye sees.

Here is a classic example of perspective in action, in one of the great works of Renaissance art by Raphael. Notice the realistic sense of depth and structure created by the precise application of theories of perspective in this fresco painting. Raphael certainly didn't have a photograph to work from in painting this - yet even if he had, he would have needed to use theories of perspective in order to reproduce how the human eye would actually view the scene, and eliminate camera distortion.

To learn more about perspective, check out these two easy to follow tutorials on one-point and two-point perspective.