By
James on June 28th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Art After the explosive popularity of our Paintings, Not Pictures post, Doug Bloodworth sent along four more of his large, painted masterpieces. These are all unofficial working titles of the pieces as he hasn’t listed them on his website just yet.
“Lebowski” by Doug Bloodworth
“Oreos and Spidey” by Doug Bloodworth
“Road Map” by Doug Bloodworth
“Superchip” by Doug Bloodworth
More about Doug Bloodworth can be found at his website, DougBloodworth.com.
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In what way are these paintings any better than the original photographs from which they have been copied? Granted, it requires a great degree of skill to make such perfect copies but I am afraid it seems to me to be a pretty pointless skill.
If any of these images really impressed me then I would be interested in buying the original photo since it was in taking the photo that the real artisitic creativity was involved. Producing these paintings seems to me to be a pointless waste of time.
Actually this is quite a useful skill. He has painted quite a few realistic murals on walls and buses. Look at his website and then make a judgement.
I can see where you’re coming from, but the important thing to remember is that these are not paintings of pictures. They’re essentially photo-realistic, still-life paintings done entirely by hand. There was reference used, but few of these scenes actually existed. Just as in other types of art, a lot of the skill lies in creating something from nothing, just as Doug Bloodworth has so masterfully done.
Photographs are limited by the range of colour and light they can capture. Especially digital. These paintings can represent subtle nuances in colour and shade that would otherwise be lost. One way around this is through HDR but that’s also a very technical process that will depart from the original photo(s). HDR is actually the composite of a range of exposures.
Also, most professional photographers tweak or manipulate their photos either in the darkroom or an editor such as Photoshop, so you’re (usually) not seeing the “true” original anyway. The difference is that it’s much more difficult to paint than to Photoshop.
re: pointlessness; this is the problem artists face every day in our society. Only other artists seem to realise just how much work goes into something like this.
For you this might be a mildly intruiging 5 minutes of web surfing, but for the artist they likely represent dozens-hundreds of hours of painstaking, labourious, meticulous work and planning. That’s on top of the MANY years required just to develop the raw technical skill. It’s not something you can “just do”. It takes a lifetime of dedication and personal sacrifice. You’ve gotta respect that.
Plus, you’d be surprised at just how widespread hyper/photorealism actually is. Album covers, advertising, matte paintings in film, the list goes on and on. Those are all high $$ industries that DEPEND on this kind of skill.
anyway that’s my $2.50c :)
oops sorry, the caps look a bit shouty :) not my intention, just trying to add emphasis :)
For the most part, these are too slick for my taste – never mind the issue of photography – I can’t tell them apart from the deluge of digitally produced art out there. I can’t do that stuff but I’m not interested. Now I know these are not digital art works ..still one wonder what the point is. More power to Mr. Bloodworth and to his collectors though. Thank god we don’t all have to do the same thing and that there are tastes for everyone out there.
Still for me I want paintings where I can see the vibrancy of brushwork. I want to see paint caressed by the artist’s touch. But hey, I gotta admit and confess – I do like the Spidey-Oreo image. Who wouldn’t?
I’m a big fan of the realism but I must agree. With so much digitally produced art and photography flooding the market it’s very hard to appreciate the work put into these seemingly mundane paintings.
I think they’re all great, even better knowing they’ve been painstakingly pored over, but knowing someone else can effectively capture the same effect using a computer is saddening to consider.
not the same effect – these are actual, real, physical pieces; not 0s and 1s :) seeing something on a 15″-23″ monitor can’t even come close to the experience of seeing great work in real life. and yes i’m aware you can print to canvas etc (even with paint) but there’s something very profound in being physically close to something the creator has actually touched and laboured over.
I know what you mean about digital. It still takes skill, but not in the same way. the advantage and the disadvantage are the same … it’s a very fast, clean, and cheap way of producing work, which means there’s a lot of it, of varying quality!!
While they may actually be real physical paintings is beside the issue for me. It is the ‘look’ of them that , while impressive that anyone would spend that much time and care to produce (I do respect that), leaves me a bit cold. It is a strange world we are in now, that one would know that a painting was an actual hand painted object d’art yet say, as I originally did, “It looks like a lot of digital art.’
I don’t discount the fact there are talented, highly gifted artists working in the digital medium…but, and maybe I’m just an antiquity here, to me it’s all too much like virtual sex. Who wouldn’t want the real thing and who would choose the , no pun intended, digital version?
By comparison, since so much digital stuff involves fantasy/science fiction illustration, I offer this link for consideration. Now I prefer, by far, this guy’s work and he explains why he eschews digital medium for traditional. Please meet Donato Giancola!
http://www.donatoart.com/index.html
Yeah I can see your point about the look, personally I prefer more illustrative or painterly work as well, and in fact dismissed hyper/super-realism as hokey for many years, but i do admit that i’ve gained appreciation for the sheer technical skill of it
BTW M I don’t think of the use of caps as shouting – depends on context. I use them for emphasis most often.
My taste actually runs to painters such as David Leffel, Jacob Collins, Sarah K Lamb…Odd Nerdrum… David Kassan and will look for inspiration anywhere within the breadth of that range of work.
You know the other day, as I wrote, I thought to mention Chuck Close’s name as someone who’s early work impressed the hell out of my. You know the black and white airbrush stuff from the late 60s to the process color airbrush work he adopted in the 70s perion. Last year I went to the Met and looked at two of his works from that period and they flat out left me cold…like fish washed up on a Long Island beach. They had no surface..Look I even get it that that’s is exactly part of what Close was going for – I do. But Close is a great artis. Look at what he did after his paralysis! He IS an artist. His greatest work, IMHO is the post-paralysis period. He is a genuine American hero.
what kind of person would understand the skills that go into this kind of art ?