[meowzero]

I met a local portraiture teacher, and all he did was take a nice photo of someone and copy it on canvas. His craft seemed great. But I didn't get the point of copying a photo exactly. Why not just print out the photo? But I guess he enjoyed the painting process.

[pmoriarty]

"Why not just print out the photo?"

An interesting argument... which could be extended to "why paint from life?" because you're just copying what you see.

In fact, some artists who paint completely from their imagination or who create nonrepresentational art have this exact objection to just painting what you see (even without photographic reference), which they don't find interesting because it's not creative enough for them.

[jack_riminton]

Yes it'll never turn out as good because you're no longer painting a face; you're painting a poorer 2D representation of a face

[HPsquared]

What if a 3D scan were taken of the subject, and the artist then made the painting while viewing the 3D representation in some kind of augmented reality setup?

That would be 3D but still effectively painting from a "photo".

[jack_riminton]

But then you're adding in several more processing layers away from reality: 1) the digital scan won't pick up the details sufficiently 2) the AR rendering will again strip a lot of detail

It'd also be incredibly difficult and straining for your eyes of focussing on a canvas and then on an AR image

[meowzero]

his painting looked exactly like the photo. So it's like a painted version of the photo. It was very realistic. And like I mentioned, the craft of painting was great. But he took the time to take a nice portrait with a camera so he can paint it.

Since I'm a photographer, I guess I didn't get why he would need to copy a photo exactly.