Evening Shadows at Dry Island, 6x12, Oil on Panel, Plein Air

 

 

The more I paint from life, the harder I find it is to work from photos. The range of colour and value nuances are hard to capture with a camera, and lens distortion adds all sorts of frustration. When I am painting something right in front of me, it's just easier to see and then translate that with paint. Also, if I want to paint the same scene over and over, there is always something new even if only due to changes like time of day, season or weather. And I think more of my senses are engaged when I stop and spend an hour or so painting or drawing from life as opposed to working from a photo. Certainly, I feel I understand the subject more completely.

 

I recently read a question regarding reference photos posted to a large Facebook art group by a very new painter who wanted to know where she could find copyright-free photos to paint from. While I applaud her for respecting image ownership, and most replies provided numerous sources to find such photos, as well as recommendations to contact photographers and request permission, I felt the artist asking the initial question and most respondents missed a really important point. Painting or drawing doesn't need to be as complicated as we all seem to make it. I get how much nicer it is to work from a subject that speaks to us but feel we tend to miss the opportunities that exist right in front of us. In and amongst the day's feed on that same Facebook group page was the most exquisite little painting of brown and white eggs sitting in a cardboard egg carton. The artist had painted from a simple little still life she set up in her kitchen. She chose to closely crop in on about half the carton. Her design used that carton to create diagonals and verticals and many dark shadowed negative spaces throughout the piece. The eggs were painted with a variety of lost and found edges and bright direct sunlight as well as reflective light. The result is simply a stunning little painting. If I remember correctly only two of us who responded to the original Facebook post recommended painting from life as well as using your own photos.

 

Several years ago, I painted with a small group of ladies who meet a couple times a month throughout the winter. They hire an instructor and primarily work on individual pieces but occasionally work on class exercises provided by the teacher. I recall one exercise where we all painted from the same photo which was a close-up of three pears. There were not enough photos to go around and some of us referenced an 8x10 image propped up on the chalkboard about 25 feet away from our desks. To this day I do not understand why we were painting from a photo. The desks are all easy to move and can be arranged in semi circles: a few plates of fruit would have provided all students with ample subject matter. Instead of having the photographer work out a composition for us, we would have had to compose and design our painting as well as figure out colors and values. And instead of guessing about shadows, highlights and reflective light, we could have just looked closer at the real thing. Designing and composing our painting would have been harder but I think the painting part may have been easier then using the photo. This is not to say that the exercise was futile, but simply that it missed an opportunity to present painting from life and introduce that as an option worthy of consideration.

 

     

 

I do not consider myself a flower painter and certainly have no interest in becoming one. However, I do love paintings of still life and flowers and can appreciate the skills required. These three paintings are daily practice pieces from last September using a few roses from my garden that survived significant frost but wouldn't have made it through the 30 cms of snow that came in early October. I can not imagine attempting to paint these from a photo. The smell alone made the experience most enjoyable.