“As an artist you can’t be afraid to change angles and poke and prod. This is why we work from a live subject. If you work from a photograph you only get one angle and you can’t touch your subject. But when we work from life we can really get in there and do some in depth investigation.
“…think about art not as an act of creation but as an act of deep observation.”
Courtney Clinton, Rokeby Museum Distance Drawing Course Week 1: Vision
“From life” doesn’t mean “outdoors”, it means “not a photo”, something you can hold and turn, or walk around, to see the ‘other side’. So not a photo of a vase with flowers, but flowers you can touch and smell and that will droop and drop their petals if you take too long to paint them. Not that flowers past their prime can’t be a painting.
