I can't seem to wrap my head around overpainting being passed off as just painting. It's a Photomanipulation and should be classified as such, or as Photography. I'm not talking about photo expressionism, or photo abstraction; that's an entirely different area of graphic design. I'm talking about taking a photograph, slapping on some brush strokes here and there, perhaps a median filter, highlights, levels... voila, instant masterpiece. I don't like being lied to, and I've seen a lot of photomanips on this site with comments like "Wow, impressive detail!" Is that compliment directed toward the artist or the Nikon D5000?

I don't mind overpainting as long as the artist admits that it is a photograph. With the improvements in digital painting tools that have been made over the years it's easier to trick someone into thinking something was painted from scratch. I would even rather see someone trace over a photograph and make a new drawing from that.

However, this raises a new question of 3D manipulation: rendering a figure out of a 3D program and using that as your base from which to start. I'm not even sure what I think of this technique.

I could write a whole book on this so I'm going to stop before I waste too much time writing journal entries.

Am I wrong? Feel free to comment on what you think.