It would be lovely to paint plein air all the time but the English weather doesn't always permit. Personally it also limits the subjects I can paint. It makes no sense for me to try and paint anything moving from anything but reference photographs. That doesn't mean that being outdoors and seeing the subject up close is not beneficial. I think I paint birds better because I observe them in the field and have some understanding of their movement. Even landscapes somehow benefit from actually caring about and knowing the scene.
Photographs play a big part in my painting. The wonders of the modern mobile phone means that a decent quality digital camera is almost always to hand and I take a lot of photographs to help in paintings later on.
I find myself always looking for things to paint. This is very different than looking for the nice views. Its hard to explain but I am constantly taking photographs of shapes, compositions, lighting effects and just things that interest me,
Here is an example of what ended up on my camera roll from a recent trip to Edinburgh. In my mind at some point I am going to try and paint a street scene during, or shortly after, a rain storm with cobbles or paving slabs shining in the light. And here is the problem - I've tried to take the photograph I'm going to paint quite a few times but every single time it never looks as interesting as the individual components in the painting I can imagine (the photograph at the top of this blog is a typical example). So I am trying to gather the pieces together which will help me turn a basic composition into something better. A more typical example would be the other way round. I've got quite a few photographs of scenes I like but taken on a dull day. Every time I see a nice sky I take a photograph so I have a folder called 'skies' so that I can mix and match.
I can imagine painting this one - or something similar. What I like is the little glimpses of reflection in the puddles. I can imagine this popping with a small child jumping in puddles further along the road with a bright red or orange coat on. I think the textures in the nud in the foreground of bike tyre tracks and footprints will work well but there would definitely need to be a hard crop on the image for me to make a painting out of it.
Now - about that child in the red or yellow top.... I do paint townscapes quite often and until recently they were fairly figure-free. The reference images I had either didn't include people or the people were in positions that just weren't credible.
To solve the problem I have quite a few photos like this one of crowds walking towards me and away from me, sitting down, eating etc so that I can insert some into scenes where the real ones are either absent or preposterous. I can change hair styles, colour of clothing, and groupings but there is something which stands out about a real figure in a grounded posture. Some walking people just look more 'walky' than others. Artists and photographers will realise that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. There are regularly colours in the sky and in landscapes that are amazing but I worry how they will read if they were not altered in a painting. I also believe that the human eye is far more nuanced than a camera
lens. I have a lot of photographs where the light appeared far more nuanced when I took them than I can detect in the image later. Some time ago I did a pen and ink drawing of some nettles in a hedgerow and I am toying with the idea of doing a series through the seasons and in different locations. For the idea to work there needs to be some real light contrast. When I took the original photograph of the nettles I took it because the sun was just shining over the top of the hedgerow and illuminating the lovely surfaces of just a few of the nettle leaves. It was nowhere near as obvious in the photograph itself and the same is true in this Cornish hedgerow. I love the variety of plants in it but I feel it will take some hacking to work as a drawing. Part of the challenge will be that there is no 'gravity' in the photograph because the top right of the photograph loses the structure. I can imagine leaving that whole quarter off the drawing and letting the foxgloves rise up into blank paper.
I marvel at 'natural photographers' - they have a real eye for composition and exposure to create interesting images perfectly executed from the most mundane of locations. I'm not blessed with that skill to capture it at the time but, through piecing together these photographs and trying to remember what I saw in them the first time around, I have a second chance through painting.
As an aside, I continually marvel at the Old Masters who were able to capture and render animals, humans and nature in a realistic and vibrant way without the luxury of gigabytes of storage and a decent lens.
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