| Posted: 18 August 2025 at 11:15am | IP Logged | 7
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When I was a kid I somehow got it into my head that using references was “cheating”. Where this came from I cannot guess, but I convinced myself artists created everything strictly out of their imaginations. This caused me a good deal of anguish as I struggled to do the same. But it also created a habit that has served me well over the years: consciously “absorbing” what I saw in movies and TV shows, as well as the real world.* I built quite a catalog of “reference” in my head. I’d been a working professional for a decade or so before I broke down and started allowing myself to use reference, and it made quite a difference. With the arrival of Google and my iPhone I have allowed myself more and more access to what is, after all, the greatest reference library imaginable. (Tho my city street scenes still spring almost exclusively from the “generic New York I have crafted over the years.) ———— *When I decided to use the Stephens house from BEWITCHED as the Grey home in X-MEN I had no actual reference and worked entirely from memory. In ELSEWHEN I was able to google images.
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