09.15.07
Ethics of Correcting Mistakes II
“You’re a fraud,” Shannon the Baker tells me, “how can you photoshop your artwork to sell online? You’re not selling the original, its doctored up!”
Hmm. Why does she always do this?? I’m not used to questioning my decisions, but, dammit, she did it to me again.
I try to explain that any and every image that we see in the media has been doctored to some degree - take any magazine image of the Mona Lisa to the Louvre and compare it to the original. (Yes, I’ll wait.)
As I try and BS her about how every image is color corrected, she politely points out that I was also using the clone tool to remove pencil lines and bits of paint that ‘went outside the line’ - thus improving the work beyond what I originally put on the page…
So - the dilemna: is it wrong to change my sloppy pencil work, mislain brush strokes in order to make my art look better and thereby improve the work in post - or should I simply color correct it to make it look as close to the original itself??
As usual - I don’t have a freakin’ clue how to answer that.
My usual modus operandii would be to correct it - my hand is faulty, and my intention was different that what ended up on the page and by having the digital realm available to make these changes, I avoid the difficulties that previous generations had: correcting a mistake in watercolor usually meant using stiff brushes with water to scrub out the excess pigment, using a razor to carefully scrape thin layers of paper off, and bleach to reduce the remainder as white as possible. Time consuming, and damaging to the paper - not that I’m all that interested in archival quality art (all art is fleeting - but that is a topic for another day).
But - now I have to consider - am I just contributing to the whole ‘media manipulation’ problem that I rail so regularly against? I hate how magazine covers distort women and remove flaws to such an unrealistic degree that they present a version of beauty that NO ONE can attain.
Or maybe I’m just covering up the fact that I’m a sloppy painter.
