Thoughts to share, ideas to ponder

There are arguments that go on in painting circles among artists about the value of painting directly from life versus painting from photos, with each suggesting that their own method is superior.  And it continues. Those who paint with transparent watercolor, for example, may suggest that the use of an opaque white to recover light values is cheating.  Pastel painting "purists" may suggest that blending the pastels is not proper, but instead, optical layering of unblended pigment is the true and right way.  Those whose paintings have loose and suggestive brush strokes may scoff at photorealism as not being expressive enough.  These sentiments are good-natured enough and well-intentioned.  Most artists I know have a lot of respect for different styles, techniques and approaches.

Winslow Homer was known to employ a variety of techniques with his transparent watercolor paintings to achieve his objectives, including opaque white and scraping and sanding the paper. 
Winslow Homer

While it is generally accepted as true among representational painters that there is no substitute for painting from life to understand atmosphere and for training the eye to see color, those specific results don't necessarily seem to be the goal in the art of Doug Lew where painting these bicyclists--and this amazing movement--directly from life would be very difficult.
Doug Lew

I would hate to tell Maurice Quentin de la Tour that the richly blended representation of the velvet of his blue jacket in this self portrait was not the right and true way to use pastel pigments.
Maurice Quentin de la Tour

While artists themselves can be very concerned about process, viewers respond to the emotional impact of the art first, and to process second.  While technique and process  is part and parcel of learning and the lifelong quest to refine skills, at some point, imagination fueling concept begins to run the show; technique and process become the workhorses for communicating a larger idea.  That idea may be as beautiful and simple as the desire to paint the light on the side of a house, the concept that drove Edward Hopper. 
Edward Hopper

Or it may be more complex.  Consider Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World". 
Andrew Wyeth

Do we care first whether Hopper or Wyeth painted their subjects from life or photos and whether the techniques for their specific mediums was "proper"?  As these are secondary concerns for viewers, I believe they were secondary concerns for the artists also, driven to convey an idea. 

It has taken me a very long time (20+ years) to accept and wear the title "artist".  I finally figured out why: When technique and process began to be tools for me (rather than the end goal) for expressing ideas, borne out of imagination, I began to feel as though I was taking my first baby steps to becoming a real artist. 

Painting from life or photos, using transparent or opaque pigments, physical or optical blending of pastels...the list goes on and on....ultimately these processes are not the things we know as ART.  Soul, meeting imagination, and giving rise to a visual concept is the underpinning of what artists do, and it is what matters to viewers.