What do animal painters do now?

Community and Forum → Insects images → What do animal painters do now?

Peter Khramov, 29.03.2009 19:17

Y-yes, a question out of curiosity: has modern photography displaced animalists everywhere from creating images of invertebrates? For example, the same butterflies are now quite cheap/fast to shoot even for an amateur, and if you can not do this in nature-then you can reshoot from the collection. Or do the drawings still have some advantages?
P. S. We do not mean diagrams that can be specially simplified for greater clarity, but rather drawings that accurately convey the appearance of an invertebrate - for example, the same butterfly...

Comments

Likes: 1

30.03.2009 14:11, Nilson

I think that animal artists will remain quite popular in the foreseeable future. Indeed, the total drawing of an insect has lost ground and given way to photography for quite obvious reasons: even the titanic work of Makarov or Smirnov, for example, on shooting through a microscope and then processing and combining images , is less time-consuming than the artist's work. And now published atlases depicting thousands of species! This is half a life, you probably need to draw. At the same time, there is a niche where the artist cannot be replaced: drawings in children's encyclopedias, of which tons have been printed in recent years; stories from the life of insects (I strongly advise you to look at the hefty monograph E.Wilson, B. Holldobler "Ants"); artistic and aesthetic publications (I once came across a large-format book in Germany with excellent full-page portraits of insects). Apparently, there is also a financial element, when color printing does not fit into the budget, but hand-drawn graphics are quite acceptable.

This post was edited by Nilson-30.03.2009 14: 13

Likes: 3

30.03.2009 15:44, Aaata

Photographers will forgive me, but the artist who depicts an insect has, in my opinion, one clear advantage: the creative result is completely the fruit of his individual perception, which is called from "a" to "z". And, therefore, even a poor draftsman (or sculptor, etc.), even a child, in his work inevitably expresses his attitude to the object. This advantage goes away and becomes a disadvantage when you just need to reflect the subject with maximum accuracy (for example, in atlases) - here photography is irreplaceable and out of competition. I agree that a photo can also express the author's attitude, but this is only if it is artistic, which is not necessary for it. In general, both have their own niches, which is good news.

Likes: 2

Likes: 3

30.03.2009 22:17, Peter Khramov

IMHO, GOOD drawings often outperform photographs (of collectible copies), or at least compete quite well. It often happens that they stick photos, process them in different editors, in different colors, and then go and compare similar views. Much better conceptual illustrations by one good artist.

Here, I think, you are right only if you compare the average draftsman with the average photographer. Everyone is good at clicking now, but they don't draw much. Therefore, on average, a draftsman will simply be more qualified than a "photographer".
If you compare the pictures of a pro-photographer who cooks in photos of entomological collections and a pro-artist who cooks in drawing them, probably everyone will have their own advantages (such as naturalness vs artistry), but there should not be a clear advantage of the artist...

Likes: 2

01.04.2009 7:13, Динусик

Y-yes, a question out of curiosity: has modern photography displaced animalists everywhere from creating images of invertebrates? For example, the same butterflies are now quite cheap/fast to shoot even for an amateur, and if you can not do this in nature-then you can reshoot from the collection. Or do the drawings still have some advantages?
P. S. We do not mean diagrams that can be specially simplified for greater clarity, but rather drawings that accurately convey the appearance of an invertebrate - for example, the same butterfly...

Both photography and drawing require professionalism. When performing at a high professional level, in my opinion, now both are equally in demand. Sometimes it happens that the insect is only in one copy and it is not possible to take a high-quality picture of it, because somewhere the legs are not so spread out, somewhere the device does not take sharpness as it should, and it is impossible to move and rearrange it. Print quality is also important, because even a perfect photo can be printed in such a way that there are not only details of the structure, but in general the type cannot be identified.
And I am sure that despite the widespread development of photography, I as an artist will not be out of work for a long time!

This post was edited by Dinusik - 01.04.2009 17: 02

Likes: 3