Paint stayed visible as paint. Art academies across Europe graduate thousands of painters every year, and a substantial share of them work in exactly this register. That is an uncomfortable truth about how the art market functions, and a genuinely useful one for anyone paying attention early. Most emerging painters will not have a market in ten years, and nobody can tell you in advance which ones will. Many painters use photographs as reference and always have — the practice is older than the camera-shy reputation suggests.