[arttorney]

I don't have the same time pressures, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about what you say. What I am currently moving into is using 3d to create custom high dynamic range references which I then print out and use as a reference for a traditional painting. This at least forces me to paint. At the same time it results in a physical artwork rather than a digital file. Hopefully the work comes closer to what the eye might have seen than simply painting from a photograph, or a collage of photographs. Hopefully I have learned something in the process since I am the one who arranged the lights. Admittedly, there is still the philosophical crutch of no longer painting what I observe to the best of ability, but instead "observing" until I think I see what I would paint.

I do see an awful lot of stuff I consider derivative and perhaps that is an inevitable result of people recycling too much.