DAVID HOCKNEY

In his research David Hockney tries to state the fact that since as early as the 14^th century, artists used to rely on tools such as mirrors and lens in as aid for the realisation of their paintings. 

He actually recreates the same environment as of what the 14^th century painter had availability of and at hand, his approach cannot be discarded as he followed carefully step by step the same ancient principles. As he himself states it was all about finding the best and simplest technique and that’s exactly what he manages to reinterpret, in simpler terms it would have been practically impossible to achieve such accurate images both in scale and dimensions without the use of such aids.

These very same principles of using aids to portray the real scale and detail of an object onto a painting was also used to create the perspective in an image, as David Hochney ventured to Florence to put into practice the same technique that Brunelleschi had conducted to paint the Battistero in circa 1412, once into the cathedral and facing outside it was just like a camera obscura and via the use of a mirror he managed to achieve the image upside down and have it scribed on a sheet of paper, now by the use perspective lines he was able to obtain a bigger image. By all this evidence put into practice and with the several positive results obtained confirms that David’s Hockney theory is right and one cannot deny that painting aids were used to achieve particular detailed results.

Today we are still using the very same principles, where lenses are used to view and record images on camera, or in the case of paintings they can be used to project a more accurate guideline for reference.

YouTube, 2010. David Hockney's Secret Knowledge (part 4/8). [online]

Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vsBaA33GZ0 >
[Accessed 29 October 2013].