Photos as a reference

Use of Photos to Design Your Painting

Thinking back to my workshop with Nancy Tankersley who emphasized the use photos to design the painting rather than making the painting look like the photo,  I made a lot of changes to this photo for the painting.  The two main ways it has been changed is moving the pumpkins around and changing the light.  I don't like to have the shadows in front with backlighting. 

So here is the photo and the final painting...  (a lot of cropping going on - thank goodness for the zoom feature on my ipad)

 

 

I might do a bigger painting of this because I like the way the purple and orange look together. 

Resources

Choosing what to paint -


I learn a lot from looking at other blogs.  I read this one today and it has such good information about how to choose what excites you about a photograph and what to leave out. 

I found this artist by looking at the judge's picks for last month's contest at Daily Paintworks which is another resource, too.  You don't have to be a member to enter the contests either.  I entered one this month, too. 

Here is the link to a wonderful blog by Brienne Brown.  Thank you for this helpful information

http://briennembrown.com/blog

Here's a painting I did recently where I cropped out a lot and was happy with the design it created.  The yellows surround the purples of the turnips.

In this one the Hollyhocks caught my attention.