YOU ARE YOUR REFERENCE LIBRARY
Understanding Your Needs is Crucial to Building One
What’s amazing about artists is that they develop their eye and aesthetic by the things they choose, by what they surround themselves with. Whether it’s books, clothes, music...sure it’s like anybody else, but when it comes to reference and inspiration that’s where you find out about yourself.
Before the rise of the robots...er...internet, artists would build elaborate MORGUE FILES. Cutting countless magazines, sending away for stock photo books, and buying those big cheap coffee table books riddled with pictures on all kinds of subjects. And in some cases even before that, when it was more prevalent, taking their own photos or hiring someone else to do it. What was great about this system was the potential for it to be far more diverse from what artist to the next. Sure, many had subscription to the best magazines like LIFE, TIME, LOOK, MCCALLS, etc. but there were still opportunities to glean even more from local magazines or smaller publications.
In college, at graduation and portfolio review I remember several people had painted portraits of Jack Nicholson from GQ magazine. It was an arresting image, and for some reason, perhaps out of laziness they all gravitated toward the one image. They just rendered it. They didn’t bring any conceptual thought or energy to it and so...their rendering skills became the focus, unfortunately.
Nowadays, the lazy artist chooses one of the first 50 images on Google Image search for their library. We’re all guilty of it on some level. That’s why it takes some creativity when it comes to what you type in, what you’re looking for, and more importantly--how you use it.
🔸 If you’re enjoying our Substack and all of the content we produce for you for free, yet don’t have the budget to become a paid subscriber, please consider a “One Time Donation” which would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Here’s some of my favorite reference sources:
PINTEREST: The organization alone is worth its weight in gold. For every project I make a SECRET PINTEREST BOARD. This is essential for me to get to exactly what I need when I need it. I also manage to upload thousands of images, so nothing lives on my hard drives or other cloud services that charge way too much. Big Savings!
GOOGLE: As a search engine it’s hard to beat. You can save images to Google Drive, but I still Right Click and Save to Pinterest.
BING: Surprisingly this is a powerful search engine that gives you different results than Google. It’s a good contender if you can stand some of the User Interface.
FLICKR: It can be a little tough downloading some images, but if you don’t have to it’s got a nice variety that isn’t readily available through search engines.
500PX: Beautiful photography and great variation of subjects and locations from around the world.
MODEL MAYHEM: Is great if you find a model with multiple images. You can build character sheets more easily with the same model, and in some cases find a model you’d like to photograph in your area.
MORGUE FILE: And yes, I still clip magazines while watching television for my own morgue file. Fashion and styles change over time and whatever magazine comes in the house is generally not safe from my scissors.
The crazy thing about ANY type of reference sourcing is that you can rabbit-hole quickly and lose hours at a time. Our brains wander and we start playing association games. To get around that set a five-to-ten-minute timer to limit your search. Don’t despair if you run out of time. This is more about keeping your focus and getting to the good stuff.
You’re only as good as your reference.
If you’re working on a historical subject or a very specific location, then you really need to put in the research time. Hitting up museums and city libraries are also a great way to gather information and reference. Always bring a high-res low-light camera with you. Many of the good books are not allowed to be taken out and you never know when you’ll see something in a museum that’ll catch your eye. In some cases, I even look to historical paintings, drawings, sculptures and etchings to help with costume designs and settings.
So, keep those eyes peeled and build that library!
=s=