the clone tool and textures. cop-out or accepted art technique?

#1

My name is Francois. I am a 2d artist and I like details. i like them a lot. And when i actually manage to make skin actually look like skin through clever use of brushes, my chest swells with pride… “i did this,” i tell myself, " it was hard to figure out and the wrinkles were a bitch but i damned well did it!"

Then i was introduced to the clone tool, and i was shown how it could be handy for matte paintings: take a picture of a natural stone wall, select clone tool, apple-click on a spot on the wall, and paint an object, anything really. Shade it and voila: instant stone sculpture! i was amazed, and later, a little concerned:

it’s too damned easy! i used to spend hours figuring out how to make believable textures of wood and stone by hand, but now i’m shown this shortcut and i now wonder if i managed to mess up my growth as an artist. I still can’t do treebark by hand. i still can’t do stone right besides using a noisy feather brush. And now it looks like i won’t have to. Boy, does that ever bother my pride.

And i’m definitely gonna use this trick, especially when i’m on a deadline. What i really wanna know: what general sentiment is reserved for it? is it resented as a quickie or accepted as a legitimate art technique?

#2

In my wholesome opinion, the fact that artists have used other tricks of the trade to help them speed up the process but still had to use a good eye and see everything that was there anyway such as grids, the optique, ect. I dont see any problem in using the same thing in todays craft. The clone stamp tool is ludricous to call it something cheap and easy like filters, but since you allways have to do some modification to make the image you want, there shouldnt be a problem. I also think its dumb how some artists still insist on every pieces of a texture to be hand painted, the problem is it never has looked right unless you were going for a specific realization that required it to be hand painted. I mean at the same time, you can use blood to make a photoreal image, does that make it the fastest and most efficent method? no, does it make a specific impact on an image? yes. Thats my 2 cents =).

#3

If using the clone stamp and healing brush is wrong, then I dont want to be right. :wink:

Use whatever tools you have at your disposal - getting to the final product is all that matters, there is no “cheating”.

#4

You will have to decide whether you want to look at yourself as a true (fully qualified) artist or a craftsman. If you want to be a craftsman, nothing wrong with using clone tool to deliver results. If you want to become an artist who will always produce work using a computer, then using the clone tool should be acceptable (as long as you do not claim otherwise).

However, if you aspire to be an artist that can produce work in both digital and traditional media, then you need to learn to paint bark, stone and whatnot by just using brushes and strokes, the primitive way. I very much doubt if any genius can invent a cloning brush for traditional oil/acrylics painters any time soon. When it finally comes, it will have to be so expensive that poor artists can ill afford.

#5

maybe… :expressionless:

#6

That is true about traditional means, but then again traditional pants you can use whatever the hell you want to make those specific effects, like even wood itself =). And scanning still doesnt give the same effect as the real stuff on paint would. (I even used my shoe to make hair once in a painting =).

#7

I admire people who can do all those things by hand, but I don’t really have a problem with a bit of cloning, as long as your painting doesn’t turn into a photomanipulation. What worries me, though, is the photo’s people use. A lot of “artists” use other peoples photo’s without their permission to make their textures. Only use other photo’s if you are allowed to use them (just crediting the photographer is not enough!), or just grab a camera and make your own :slight_smile:

#8

It really depends on what kind of work you do. If you’re a production artist making textures or assets for video games, special effects for film/TV, or CG animation, then you shouldn’t be all that concerned, as it’s really not very important when compared to the bigger picture of what you’re actually working on.

If you’re an individual artist doing personal works or freelance works for illustration or fine art, then it also depends on what your emphasis is. As far as I’m concerned, the most important aspects of anyone’s work as a painter are:

  1. The idea expressed
  2. The execution of the idea (is it cheesy and pretentious, or is it profound and moving?)
  3. The artist’s knowledge (composition, color theory, values, anatomy, perspective, lighting…etc)
  4. The artist’s technique (brushwork, rendering style)

Your concern with stamping and cloning…etc is really just a small part of what makes a great piece of work. No amount of great texturing (hand-painted or cloned from photos) will make a great painting. And if it’s just production art for a commercial product where the bigger picture is the only important thing, then it’s really not much of a concern.

#9

Yes, the clone-tool is evil and CRTL-Z is extra evil. Don’t dare to save your work - this is über-evil.

Why do you want to work with a software and limit yourself with not using all its tools?

#10

Just because something’s easy doesn’t make it bad. When I’m creating a texture for a 3D model, I’d be lost without the clone tool, both to enlarge the texture, to cover up imperfections, to hide details that don’t belong on the texture, hundreds of reasons.
And trust me, learning to use the clone tool effectively isn’t all THAT easy.

#11

I look at it as more of a challenge. We have the tools to make images more amazing than just about anything ever done. We can do in decent amount of time grand and epic images that would take people using just oils years to do. But what I see is people doing all of the same old tired things with no jump in quality, vision etc. Seems the tools just make many of us lazy:)

#12

Was thinking about this some more so came back to it again. For some reason people think hard and time comsuming = merrit of finished work. But if you think about it thats just silly. If that was the case I could say look I am not using a computer at all (Like many of my painter friends). Then I could go another step and say I am going to paint only with a tooth pick and while standing on my head. Now people would say WOW he painted that while standing on his head using only a tooth pick thats amazing. But does that make the finished art work any better - No. Their is a reason why artists started using photography as soon as it came out. The product is more important than the process. Of course this subject will on and on in the forums and art community as we have more and better tools. People wil mix more and more 3D, Photo and Painted processes into a single image. Some things will become easer. But you still have to tell a story, catch a mood, have a pleasing composition.

As I side note even as things get easer I still believe artists need very strong basics that they are not getting in most colleges.

#13

give someone that is not artistically inclined photoshop and the clone tool… andhe would not create art. clone tool is just that a tool… just like paper or a type of pencil produce effects… some styles can be created in oil painting that cant be done in water color…so argueing about how you do it is pointless… i beleive the final art is what matters

#14

lol if theres an easier way to do something why not use it? yeah sure maybe hurts ur pride a little but doesnt coming up with a real nice final product boost ur pride enuf? lol…

besides… my teacher always told us in the art industry… cheating is encouraged :slight_smile: and yeah i like cheating? do u? geuss thats the real question here…

#15

see title. just to prove you can do it. then its ok to “cheat”. :slight_smile: while there is an undeniably huge satisfaction to simply creating art by hand to most of us, once you get into production work, you will rapidly get burned out or be unable to keep up with the pace, if you dont adopt the most efficient techniques to get to the desired result. and of course often the result is also based around what techniques are fast to do with certain tools and techniques, so to duplicate those results in other ways becomes really stupid if you see what i’m saying. if you are on a project and the art lead sets a style based on cloning photos to make tiles, its going to be real dumb to try to match that style with hand painting, you will kill yourself. i know somebody who did, literally. its a sad story. and thats the name of commercial art for ya.

that being said in my student thesis project i did 100% of everything myself, by hand blahb lah cause its art for arts sake and in that case i dont have to answer to anyone but myself for the process, and i wanted to own every pixel.

#16

to me the argument is similar saying, you shouldnt use the paint bucket tool, instead use the brush tool at 10 pixels to fill in a space, because otherwise thats cheating. to me its just another tool. what ever it takes to get the end product that fufils your vision is whats important, wheather you use clone tool, or brush, or pencil, what ever doesnt matter.

so i say cheat your ass off, just dont get caught hahah

#17

By the way, if this is cheating, than in my opinion, using a ruler when drawing in traditional art (or using masking fluid when waterpainting) is also cheating :slight_smile:

#18

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