Where to Draw the Line

James Gurney and his Substack readers reflect on truth, tools and transparency in art

- By JAMES GURNEY

Is tracing from a photo cheating? What about using AI as a tool? Back in the 20th century, a painter named Konstantin Kryzhitsky (1858-1911) committed suicide when it was revealed that he copied from a photo. According to art historian Natalya Gorlenko, “It turned out that Kryzhitsky used a still [photograph] in his painting called A Whiff of Spring. Another painter, Yakov Brovar, used the same still in his piece A View in Bialowieza Forest. The resemblance in both images struck the eye, and a debate in the newspapers ensued.”

Gorlenko continues: “It became a matter of general consensus that the painter disgraced himself when resorting to photography. And yet photography was a permanent fixture in artistic activities, and painters could no longer ignore it.”

Using photography for reference may seem like old news today, but a lot of people still debate it.

The purpose of this article is to help you figure out what’s okay and what’s not okay in the practice of art. Each of us has to decide for ourselves which tools and practices are desirable, and which are unhelpful or wrong.

Grids, Viewfinders, and Dividers

For centuries, artists have used lens-less tools such as plumb lines, sighting grids and viewfinders to help them translate the three-dimensional world into two dimensions, and those tools are almost universally approved.

Diane V. Mulligan uses an acrylic sighting grid: “My favorite drawing aid on location is a piece of plexiglass that I hold up and ‘trace’ the composition onto the plexiglass with a wet erase marker.”

Ken Rohleder uses dividers to check his work early in the process. “I like to just draw at the penciling stage and use proportional dividers or a coarse grid to be sure everything is in the right place if the canvas is large,” he says.