I don’t dare paint direct from my computer screen because I’d get paint or pastel all over the living room carpet. When needed, I print off my image, often as both a colour and a greyscale one. I don’t however find this very useful when landscapes are a bit on the “green” side because they come out looking dreadfully boring…thus I lose interest in doing them.
Flowers are best done from life, but of course that’s a bit tricky in winter. I’m not sure about getting a handheld computer just for artwork…I tend toward a lot of detail and to be honest I’m probably better off without having a load of it in front of me. I’m trying to learn how to use the photo as a starting-point, rather than copy every line.
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I like to sketch from a computer screen and paint from printed
photos. Sometimes I’ll print the photo in black/white so I can see the values. At a certain point I’ll put the photo away and just paint to respond to the painting itself.
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That’s an excellent point @tbarts about putting photos away and let the painting…I learned the hard way and still forget sometimes.
That’s what I am doing. Just got an iPad Mini and have set up the iCloud photo sharing option. We’ll see how it goes.
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Used to paint from a photo…but for me it’s a waste of printer paper and ink…I pretty much use my iPad or computer screen nearby.
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I used to paint from photos for a long time.
Now I take a b/w copy for the values and use my iPad for the colors.
Although the screen can’t mirror the reality, it’s far better than a print.
You can simply change contrast, hue and saturation etc.
Some days ago, I found a useful nice FREE app for cropping and “gridding” the photo:
Link for iPad: "Jackon’s ArtGrid"
Link for Android: “Jackson’s ArtGrid”
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If I use a photo, [preferably my own photo] it is to convey whatever initial impact I liked in it. Once I capture the essence on my painting, the photo gets shelved to prevent me from "copy"ing it to keep idea fresh.
I have a few media cards of images categorized: scenes, faces, still life, etc. The media card then goes into digital frame which sits on my painting table.
Photos, thumbnail sketches, and it is rarely that I ever use my computer screen to paint from as a point of reference.
I paint from an IPad - only photos I have taken and edited myself- I can alter them mid stream or do s value only edit and I can photograph my own work and compare values too. I also paint out on site and spend a lot of time outdoors just looking and photographing, sometimes sketching an making note of time of day, color notes. I find that digital resources play havoc with reds, oranges and pinks. Miss film camera sometimes - it did different things better. Am learning more about photoshop and camera raw, but that’s pretty time consuming for me right now.
I paint from my 10" tablet (Android) or my laptop. I like that I can turn the tablet to portrait or landscape orientation. Depending on which version of Android you use, you CAN transfer images back and forth by plugging it in and of course you can use Airdroid or other apps to transfer them but I usually upload anything I want to paint to my dropbox so it will be available on all of my devices almost instantly. I don’t think I’ve ever emailed myself a photo or file.
I recently visited a good painter/friend who painted from his iPad for awhile–in fact, the guy who inspired me to get one for that purpose–and noticed he was again painting from prints. When I asked him about it, he said he had found the iPad makes things “too blue.” Now I’m paranoid–I’m not not seeing it.
I find my camera makes things too blue. I have a challenge changing them to be the ‘actual’ colours to post online.
While I have never painted from the screen I do paint using print-outs/photos by necessity, as reference. It is helpful. I’d rather use a combination of life and photos as reference printed or on screen does not matter much to me. I’m not trying to replicate a photo. I’m trying to capture the, “feeling” of it, the time, the place and most importantly my response to it. Copying the colors and shapes on screen or print can be a good exercise possibly. I take creative liberty with both my colors and my drawing ideally. Gesture in both is important.
If the image is, “too blue” changing it in any number of photo editing programs is basically very easy. Even better, just change it while you are painting and at some point the colors next to one another on your canvas will be as important or more than what you see. Why be restricted to trying to duplicate a photo which is another medium anyway. Are you trying to duplicate inks on paper or screen colors in paint? It’s never going to be more than an approximation at best anyway. Technically there are more colors available to see on screen than any printed medium. so screens may be superior for that.
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David Randall…I refer to my comment about my camera making things rather blue. I did mean the photo I take of my finished painting to upload onto DPW and not how or what I paint. I realise now that my comment was a little ambiguous.
Ahhh, big difference. I don’t think many images will not require some color management no matter the camera. Maybe different lighting would help. It never seems easy.
I use a local scanning/printing service (same machinery used by the Smithsonian) rather than my photographic skills but not everyone is near such superior machinery nor willing to pay the price. Despite the fantastic scanning equipment each scan requires some work in PhotoShop to fine tune it nevertheless and this is with truly top of the line equipment.
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Always a challenge David…keeps us on our toes. 
I painted from my iPad until I got a large monitor for my art studio, now I don’t have to email photos to my iPad as the monitor is connected to my computer. I like to draw and sketch from life, but I prefer to paint in my studio with the monitors help.