Photos, Phones and Art Models. Oh my.

Welcome, we are very glad to have you here. I am guessing you are reading this because our blog description caught your attention. 

Please be sure to check out our FB group to participate in pose requesting/ posting:

https://m.facebook.com/groups/artistposingforartist. 

IG: https://www.instagram.com/artistposingforartist/

I think it best to address a couple of elephants in the room, if you will,  concerning our end goal:

1. Aren’t professional academically trained artist discouraged from drawing from photos?

-While I would wholly agree with this sentiment I do find it easier and more realistic to draw from photos since I do not have a model on hand at my beck and call. The pandemic has greatly changed things as well with in person modeling.

- In addition any artist who accepts commissions will inevitably be presented a photo or photos in which to reference. Accepting photos for commissions also opens up opportunities worldwide instead of limiting yourself to those willing to pose in person. 

- Once again one should practice drawing from life every chance one gets. Even using a mirror helps, when a model is not available. 

- The responsible answer to using a photo reference is approaching it with a proper understanding of anatomy, looking for and correcting photo distortion and finally by utilizing a constructive drawing method.

2. Don’t many artist who utilize photo references often warn the difference and dangers of good vs bad photo references.

- The warning holds merit and I would agree with those points often presented.

-Yet we as artist should be pushed and not necessarily be a slave to our references (and used as a guide). Eg. Every artist should have a good understanding of lights/ darks on form, anatomy and constructive drawing. A picture void of such can be drawn in a way that depicts the desired shadow. (Eg. A photo reference void of proper shadows can easily be resolved with an understanding of light/ form and you the artist can determine in which direction the light is facing the subject resulting in a picture that depicts proper lighting.)

- In addition an artist willing to pose for another artist gives them the unique opportunity to better understand what is needed to set up a model later down the road if an opportunity should arrive.

- Every artist has to start somewhere and a lot of phones nowadays have decent cameras. (Although some might still argue the merits of a stand alone DSLR camera in which I cannot contend.)

3. And the most important in my opinion would be: Wouldn’t the creation of this platform discourage people from using art models of every kind: Zoom, online who sell photo reference packs and live models and even hinder them financially?

- I wholeheartedly encourage that artist would still seek out art models world wide. The creation of this group is not to discourage such and hopefully through cooperative efforts of the art model community we can be an avenue in which they can actually “on the contrary” thrive.

- I will feature a free photo reference from paid art models and link to their social media/ website/ IG/ FB in order to offer free advertisement in the event one decides to seek out a paid model reference. There are many great art models out there and we hope through this cooperation both artist and art model can benefit. 

The inception of this group resulted from the recognition of a need in the art community. The need for artist to be able to have a pose resource that we can all benefit from by working together. Sure there are many sites that offer royalty free images (and they are to be commended for such) but yet they do not always feature a given pose that you the artist have in mind.

 My hope is that we as artist / art models can all benefit from this group if we all are willing to work together. We look forward to seeing your pose request and poses. Please feel free to invite fellow artist that you believe can benefit from this resource.