<p>i dont feel completely familiar about the portfolio process, but im assuming this is a fairly basic question. anyways, i have read portfolio requirements for some art schools (SVA, MICA, CCA, Pratt, MCAD, etc.), and all of them state not to draw from photographs. some of them say "draw from life whenever possible" others say explicitly "DO NOT DRAW FROM PHOTOGRAPHS". now im wondering, can they actually tell if i drew from photographs or not? how strict is this "no photograph" policy i keep seeing again and again? theres some drawings i would like to do that can only be done using (my own) photographs as reference, so...</p>
<p>oh yea, an example would be - i want to draw a side profile view of my head = need to draw from a photograph</p>
<p>also, can i use stock photography?</p>
<p>Yeah, I went to a portfolio day event and the first thing every college asked me was: Is this from real life? I could only answer no. For your self portrait (they all want one), use a mirror and do a head on view. Draw yourself in an "easy to draw" pose so you can go back to it later. If you draw the side of your head, they're obviously gonna know you drew from a photo. But if you do a head on view, after you get tired or the lighting has changed, you could probably take a picture and finish the piece off. </p>
<p>Yeah...the colleges prefer students who can capture real life objects; they want to see your best rendition of real life. Sadly, I've been sketching portraits from books for practice, and they don't count, even though I spend 8 to 10 hours on each of them. heh </p>
<p>Basically, try your best not to use picture, but you can use a bit of references if it's plausible (when looking at your drawing) that you did it from observation. These professors are usually quite sensitive about artwork, but then again, I'm sure there are others who use a lot of photo references. You'll just be viewed in a better light if you don't but I highly doubt they'd "throw away" your entire application if you used some pic refs.</p>
<p>ooh. Same thing happened to me at portfolio day^. Art schools (probably except schools like Cooper Union) seem to really care about the applicants' ability to draw/paint from real life. </p>
<p>You can draw a side profile view of your head using mirrors if you angle a couple of mirrors appropriately...Try to draw from real life as much as you can. Then when you don't have more time to use the objects (i.e. the setting sun dramatically changes the shadows of the objects, you have to leave the studio, you were using fresh food/fruits that will go bad if left out longer, etc. etc.), take pictures of them yourself and use those pictures to finish up. </p>
<p>I think stock photography is very helpful if used moderately. If you use soley professional photography to create an artwork, I would think that the art college admissions would more easily be able to detect that you used photographs. If you really want to use stock photography (which happens to me a lot), don't copy the whole photograph--use parts of the photograph instead. I use Corbis photography often esp. when I want to render details that I missed.</p>