If Linda says she uses photo’s in her pictures, there would be no flames here. If she used these pictures from photo’s she took, then that’s totallllllyyy okay with me, and I find no harm in that. But to say it’s 100% painted or that she just painted it all, in fact, is just wrong.
I can tell when something is digital or not, im not blind.
And please, let’s keep the fights down, im not trying to start a battle, im just stating my opinon, take it or leave it.
Great replies Kirt and The Xvyrk! 
Some people just can’t tolerate that others are damn good.
To me this is inspiration and a kick in the butt. Or perhaps not… because, on the other hand, I start doubting what the heck I am doing for a living; have I bluffed myself through my career pretending that I could paint? I am currently considering throwing out my Wacom and return to my old job in 7-Eleven - if they’ll take me. 
To all you critics; I’ve checked out Lindas work for years now and from the process I know that this hand and this face are 100% painted. And if they weren’t; cool! I’ve seen collages of photos ending up on the front page here. It’s still art.
It all boils down to pixels anyway; a scanned photo or a PS-painting. The thing is that Linda knows where to place the little dots.
This is the first thread I’ve really followed here on CGTalk, perhaps because I asked you a question about reference - and you still haven’t replied.
If you now tell me you did this from your head, I’ll go straight back to 7-Eleven!
Hey dude… did she mention anything about herself painting 100% on these artworks while she actually photo manipulate instead? so please don’t do all these guessing & flamming just from your own judgement. It’s being very unprofessional.
hehe, nice paintings Linda, some funny comments, should be a good read when u come back. I know I’ll be checking back to see “exactly” how you did these… but using photo textures to avoid tedious repetitive patterns is a common technique people have been using long before photoshop… whether u did or not, to me these are pure paintings, if i find u didn’t use any textures,… I will be just that much more impressed!.
thanks for sharing, love your work.
I’ve always been a major fan of yours, so I’ll spare you the fan speech.
Just going to say, it’s wonderful watching you grow as an artist. These paintings are beautiful.
Thankyou for sharing your images with us and I look forward to your book.
Tin.
I have not seen Linda painting myself but a friend had seen her in action and said she was really a fast painter. She is clearly very talented and i cannot really see why she could not have pulled this off with pure painting. It is not my cup of tea for motives but I admire hear skills and finish. Looks like she used some photoshop filters for post processing but we live in the digital age after all 
“To be talked about is better than never being talked about. Oscar Wilde.”
On Linda and Art,
Commonly, it is known that there are no bad questions, there are only bad answers. Well, in my experience, there are only bad questions in the first place.
The work and the artist, could they be separated? the concept and the technique, could they be separated? the medium and the expression, could they be separated? Is it a question of separation? All the above pairs are “binary oppositions” in Derrida’s terms. They go together and they can only be examined together. What is “black” without white?
We tend to seperate these binary oppositions when we need to believe one more than the other, a.k.a. bias.
Linda’s work can only be reduced to pure craft in a flat minded critique. I would rather see a debate in the “technique of expression”. I mean by that the psychological components of the art work and how are they being manifested. I could care less about the brush types or the filters used. These are subjective choices of the artist. I look for the objective expressions the artist is sharing with me. The true talent to admire and learn from.
With such superior talent, I would like to see that Linda explores more themes in the construction of her paintings. Beyond quiet solitude, platonic landscapes, and Renoir faces, I would like to see the irony of the human condition, the ephemeral love/hate, and versatility. The drama in Picasso and beyond.
Best,
Man, I knew this would happen the second I saw Linda’s latest work. This is my personal opinion on the matter.
When an artist gets good enough, realism is no longer some kind of a holy grail. Any competent artist can do realistic styled works from photo references, and only people who can’t do it make a big deal out of it. The question is, what happens AFTER you’ve gotten good enough and have no problem achieving realism? THAT, is the important question.
Linda obviously can paint, as she’s already demonstrated throughout her career so far. She doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone. Whether her pieces in this thread contains actualy photos painted over, or she painted them from scratch using photo references, is not of interest to me. Why? Because I KNOW she can paint it from scratch if she wanted to–all competent artists can do that. She needs not to prove that to me. What I want to see is what she’s trying to express with her pieces, now that she’s already proven she could paint very well. Now, if she painted those from life models, then it’s a different kettle of fish altogether. Painting from life is a very difficult thing, and is the ultimate training for advanced artists. Some of the best artists in the world see it as the ultimate achievement, and have dedicated their lives to painting only from life.
I’ve had to deal with accusers in the past whenever I did any kind of realistic portrait or figures. The problem comes from the fact that I also do stylized work that’s more in the anime/manga/comic books territory, and people cannot seem to understand that those are two distinctly different styles. One is based on reality, where I use either a life model or photo references, and the other is done purely out of imagination. People are so hung up on the fact that the stylized pieces “don’t show the same amount of detail/skill/realism/talent” and say that there’s a discrepancy in the quality of the two styles. What the hell did they expect? One uses reality as reference, so of course it’s going to look real and contain all the realistic details. The other is based on stylization and imagination, so of course it’s not going to look real and contain the details you expect from real life, and will contain exaggerations, idealization, and distortions. Why is that so hard to understand?
Digital has taken away the mystique and the respect people associate with realism. In fact, digital has completely cheapened the style of realism. The culprits are the people who aren’t competent artists, and could never achieve realism unless they painted over/smudged photos. Thanks to people like that, artists like Linda and me are suffering for it–we get lumped together with people like that. Even if you painted realism with impressionistic brushstrokes people still accuse you of using cloning or copying photos. What’s the point?
I have decided after the Memories of Hangzhou piece that I’m never going to do another realistic portrait digitally ever again (a few real idiot jerks at eatpoo.com jumped on me about that piece). It’s not worth the crap I get for it. From now on, all my realistic portraits will be painted traditionally, and I’ll only use digital for imaginary works. I’m glad it happened, because I really missed traditional painting, and the whole ordeal was just a catalyst to push me back to traditional painting–which I’m positive will do wonders for my future growth as an artist.
I’ve already replied to this thread, but I’d like to add some other things.
It’s entirely possible to paint this realistically. Know the right forms and colours and you can paint anything, the little details may be referenced, and textures can be used to take it to the next level, but those would be relatively easy if you already have a great deal of knowledge about where everything goes. Someone mentioned Bouguereau, if he’s still alive today to use the digital medium, he wound’t have any problems painting something like Linda did.
And Linda clearly stated that she used both PS and Painter.
AND, she doesn’t look anything like those girls, in her older work the subjects did look somewhat like her, some certain facial characteristics, they don’t so much these days, I think she’s getting a lot better at painting noses.
Hi, didn’t read the whole thread and I don’t have intention to say anything about
Linda’s work. But I read Lunatique’s post I and just wanted to say that traditional
painting is no more a guaranty that it’s not cheating (I’m not talking about you of
course). I have heard of artists that print photos on canvas with special printer
and paint over (if they can be called artists). Technology is just killing art…
Edit: typos (might have more, but anyway)
Ha. Anyone who thinks these are photo-manipulations is dreaming. You really think an artist with the rendering skills Linda has demonstrated in non-realistic subjects wouldn’t be able to get rid of photo-grain or JPG artifacts? Get real. Whoever said there were photo artifacts in the hair (sorry, didn’t read every damn post) is so far off-base it’s funny.
Sorry to feed the flamers, though. I really just dropped by to say these are looking lovely. The first one, especially, has a really fresh and happy look to it. Very refreshing to see in the middle of winter.
Hello Sweden! Very very beautiful, I admire your style, hope to see more artworks from you.
sorry PeachySticks, this part fooled me:
“Software: Photoshop”
Some people who are Enayla’s friends wouldn’t even dream to question the way she works. Why? Maybe they have seen something more than others. They are now telling here that yes she can paint stuff like that. Most of people agree that this can be painted. My question was the speed though. How’s the realism achieved so quickly? Socar and others, maybe you could answer to that instead of giving the same “she can do whatever she wants” -rant all over again?
To those who think this is photo manipulatiom I say this: when I was very young I could not understand how “humans” could draw such beautiful images in the comic books I loved, because hard as I try, I could never match their draftsmanship. Eventually I exposed my eyes to art in museums and with practise I improved my art to a point that I realized that those images were indeed drawn by “humans”, they were just much, much more talented then myself.
Linda is a great artist, period.