I have seen artists ask this question many times: Is using a reference cheating?
There is this idea that if you are a “real" artist, you should be able to create everything from your imagination. If you need to look at a photograph, perhaps you are taking a shortcut. But I have never really understood why. I believe that you don't have to prove that you can invent every detail from nothing. You don't have to make the creative process harder just to prove that you are a “real" artist.
Artists have been working with models and muses for centuries, using real people as a source of inspiration and as a way to better understand the human form. This connects to something I wrote about previously in my article From Models to Masterpieces: The Enduring Legacy of Muses in Art.
There are plenty of famous artists whose working processes involved using references. When you look at how these artists work, it is difficult to argue that using references somehow makes the resulting work less creative, If anything, it shows that reference has long been a practical part of professional art making for a very long time.
An early example is Edgar Degas who was an early adopter of using photographic references, in 1895 he took a series of photographs of ballerina to study their form, embracing a new technology to aid him in his work.
'Blue dancers' Edgar Degas 1897
Norman Rockwell regularly photographed models as part of developing his paintings, carefully arranging people and scenes so he could study the poses, expressions and details he needed. Those photographs were never the finished artwork. They were a tool that helped him create it.
'The problem we all live with' Norman Rockwell 1964
Gil Elvgren worked in a similar way with his pin up paintings, using photographs of models as visual references for his compositions. The photographs helped him work out the details, but the finished paintings were still his own interpretations.
'Riding High' by Gil Elvgren 1958
It also works the other way around. Photographers use paintings as references too. Art has always been a conversation between different forms, with ideas moving backwards and forwards in a cycle. Cindy Sherman is a great example of this. In her History Portraits series, she looked to historical paintings for inspiration and recreated the visual language of Old Master portraiture through photography.
Art has always been influenced by what came before it. We are not creating in isolation. We are taking what we see, adding our own ideas to it, and continuing the conversation.
The same photograph can become completely different things depending on who is using it. I can photograph a person in a particular pose with one idea in mind, and an artist can look at that same photograph and see something completely different. That is probably why I don't see using references as cheating. What an artist creates from it is still their own work, their own interpretation.
Reference doesn't replace creativity. It gives creativity something to work from.
- Jessica