Amdall Gallery

This post is broadly about reference images and where to get them, but really the purpose is to discuss my first experience actually paying someone to pose for painting references. Actually hiring portrait models for art reference photos, which seemed intimidating, but in reality was quite a nice experience. I’ve long relied on various royalty free image websites, such as Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay for generic references to draw and paint from. Recently, I’ve even used a few AI people generators to view some faces that don’t really exist. But I finally tried a different route, which was to pay someone, or in this case multiple someones, for a reference I could use for art. Despite my worries, this turned out to be a fantastic experience that produced hundreds of excellent references I can use in the future.

Before I get into the basics, or into the details on my experience with reference models, I’ll caveat the usual way though by saying that I am a novice when it comes to painting. I don’t have any formal training, so any advice I give here mostly comes from some degree of trial and error. Take what I say with a grain of salt and give more weight to the experts. That being said, if you’re just practicing and not going to sell the painting or any other commercial use…well, my opinion is just use whatever you want. As long as you’re not profiting from it, I think you can paint what makes you happy and don’t worry about it. When you’re just practicing and not going to do anything with it, a painting study like this should be fine. However, if you may have a commercial use, things get more complicated.

I’m not an attorney, so obviously I’m not trying to give legal advice. But I think the basics are pretty clear – if you stand to make money from your artwork, you shouldn’t use something created by someone else without permission or licensing. It does get a little more complicated when you start getting into whether it was a “transformative work”, a parody, or some other things. But when things get sticky like that, I find it’s nice to just be safe about it. For example, when I wrote a book, if there was any gray area about something, I defaulted to not including it. I ended up leaving out quite a bit that I thought may have been okay, but I didn’t want to risk it.

So, let’s say you want to find references that you can potentially use for a commercial use. And you don’t want to pay for them. Well, there are a couple paths available. One, you can look towards royalty free image websites, like Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay that I mentioned before. The US Library of Congress also has a ton of free images, but they aren’t curated or organized as well as some other sites. I use Unsplash quite a bit, mostly because it’s the first one I stumbled onto. But they have some good stuff available and it’s organized pretty well. I also like how clearly Unsplash’s licensing and commercial use details are spelled out – basically, you’re free to use their images as the basis of artwork you sell, publish in a book, or whatever other creative ideas you might have.

Another great option is you can take photos yourself. If you took the photos, then you also own the rights to them. Assuming you also have permission to use the likeness of the person in the photo too. I actually have a model release form on the back of my business card, which I’ll embed here. I’ve long had in the back of my mind that it would be useful to hire someone to get a bunch of reference photos. As a hobbyist, I can’t afford a real, professional model obviously, but I thought I might be able to pay a small amount to a regular person for a small amount of their time. But the big question is, how exactly to approach this in a way that’s safe, comfortable, and convenient for both me and the model?

This has been a vague thought for years, but without a reasonable path forward, I never took action. A couple years ago though, we moved to a neighborhood that has a pretty active private Facebook group, so I posted in the group to see if this was of interest to anyone. I provided a lot of detail; that I was an amateur, why I was looking for reference photos, and that I’d probably want to sell paintings someday. Part of my pitch is that it’s not a live portrait session, just photos to use later, so I wouldn’t take up much of a model’s time. With potential models’ comfort in mind, I proposed meeting whoever it is at the neighborhood park in the late afternoon when there would be lots of people around. I ended up with three people willing to be portrait models, which was really fortunate because I wasn’t expecting anyone to respond.

We met at the park and I told them all up front that I really have no idea what I’m doing, but I had brainstormed some ideas. I made a list including different angles, facial expressions, and other things I thought might make good paintings. But I told them if they had their own ideas, to just go for it. The sessions took only took about 10-15 minutes for each person, but I ended up with several hundred reference photos! I was pretty nervous about whether it would be weird or awkward, since I’ve never done this before, but it was an excellent experience! Although they weren’t professional models, you could have fooled me, because they were able to make any expression or pose easily.

When we discussed the details of the photo session, I was specific about how I was going to use these photos. Basically, that I was sharing just the paintings and not the originals, and that prints or copies of the paintings (not the photos) may be sold or published in a book someday. For now, it seems none of the models want to be credited. But I told the models if any of them ever change their minds, I’m glad to tag them or add names anywhere appropriate. Overall, this endeavor turned out better than I could have imagined! I’ve got a ton of references I can use in the future and I know the resulting paintings can be used for commercial purposes and all that fun stuff. My thought is also, if I improve as a painter over time, I can also use these references for more creative things – as the basis for something, rather than just try to reproduce what I see. For example, I’m painting a character, but I need that character to be talking on the phone – I could combine these references with another person/character! I’m not that good yet, but perhaps I will be if I keep practicing.

So, that’s it for this one. Definitely glad I finally tried the “hiring a model” idea. I’ll also embed the YouTube videos related to these paintings – the first two have discussion about this same topic, while the rest are basically duplicates of the above Instagram Reels.