In the blog I am going to discuss the process of working from a photo. With the smartphone came the opportunity to take pictures without carrying around a bulky camera and that has made having subject matter just a click away. Sadly a lot of our images are not very good so it is critical that you look at the image and decide right up front what you want to paint. Name the contrast, compose the image and personalize the subject to reflect your impressions or memories.
In this painting I decided to pump up the color contrast in the trees, and use the dark trees in the foreground to play against the background. With fact that the light in the image was so soft and overcast I wanted to get a more vibrant but still related take on the photograph.
I like this image and will paint it sometime also but for this version I wanted a stronger feeling of fall and complementary colors.
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Awe…Beautiful, Steve! That has now been painted (all differently) by you, Marc R. Hanson, Roger Dale Brown, Dawn Whitelaw, Becky Joy and I think John Pototschnik….and many many other artists…but certainly less impactfully by me on numerous occasions because it’s of my back yard!
Well watercolor is my fall back medium, oil is still a major struggle. I did this one as a demonstration for one of my classes.
Hi Steve. This post was passed to me on his day. I’m glad I was able to get it back. I like to compare the photo with your personal composition. By the way, am I wrong if I think it is a composition of four photos from the same site? The resulting watercolor is fantastic. Thanks. All the best.