Photo Art of Kevin ParnellDigital Painting and Artistic Photography

When a painter asks for a critique at the Digital Painting Forum, one of the comments that you see frequently is that a piece “looks too photographic”.  Most of the time that means that there isn’t enough visible brush strokes on the image, but it can also refer to the lighting.  In traditional art, there just isn’t the same kind of “dynamic range” in a painting that there is in a photograph.  If you look at impressionistic pieces, you will rarely see totally black or white areas anywhere on the canvas. 

Quite often while preparing a photograph to be painted I will reduce the mid-tone contrast of the image; most often by using something called a “contrast mask”.  And depending on my pre-visualization of a piece, I will manipulate the lighting further by using various techniques in my photo-editing software.  (Dodge and burn, “paint with light”, or even lighting effects…)  This would be another example of using “artistic license” to get the results you envision.