Today the rain forced us indoors to paint in a lovely little art room reserved for kids after school art programs. So not only do we get to paint our own work we get to look at all of the creative pieces by the artistic minds of local school children. I worked from images today and tried to carry the looseness of Plein Aire to the pieces. It is never easy since the photographic image is static and lacks the vibrancy of nature. Edges are harder, shadows are more defined and the darks and lights are not right. Cameras can only approximate the value contrast when they are set on automatic. When you are working from and image try to resist the urge to make your darks as dark as they look; in reality you can see into the darks so they are more translucent and the lights will have more color. Here are my two images from yesterday, the figure one is a study for today’s oil demonstration.
I love these!
Thanks for the information on handling photos as a reference image. Your appreciations regarding the pictorial characteristics of the photographed images, in comparison with the real ones, are enormously interesting. I really like the studies you post. Affectionately Mercedes