There are many stages involved in creating a painting of a scene.  I’m an indoors type of painter so I like to use the convenience of a camera to record the details of a subject for future reference.  Using photographs for reference is really great, if a few things are kept in mind and a couple of  pitfalls avoided.  The main elements that I have found to be of vital importance are:

• composition
• color
• perspective
• free nature of the art

Attention to Composition

The first thing to do is to capture the subject or place that you’re interested in with the camera.  This can be a bit tricky. The number of photos I’ve taken only to find, when I get home, that they just don’t have what I’m looking for to inspire me to a painting. I’ve written a few posts about what I look for and strive for when taking photographs.

Cropping a photograph can make a tremendous difference to the feel of the subject.  Understanding composition and using it to show off your subject in the most flattering way can change a prospective painting from dull and commonplace to really eye-catching.

I really liked this photo of trees in a park in England.

"Stourhead Majestic Trees" Reference Photo

Cropping it to an oval brings focus and a kind of movement to the trunks as the eye is drawn into the painting.

You can see more about the park that inspired this painting in a previous post:  Egg Tempera Painting of “Stourhead Majestic Trees”.

It’s also fun to put together a composition from a variety of reference photos, as was done with the “Knight and Monument” watercolor painting shown below.

The monument is a war memorial from a photo I took in London from a double-deck bus; the trees are from the French Jura mountains; the greenery in the foreground was taken from a flowerbed in Geneva; and the Knight and his horse are taken from a variety of shots of people on horses from a movie – the man on the horse is different from the one on that horse in the movie. Creating this painting was a lot of fun.

Another facet of  composition to be aware of is to exclude any details that are present in the photo that aren’t essential to the meaning of the piece, or may even be distracting from it. In this reference shot of a road in the town of Gex, France, the removal of the trash cans and cars, along with all the markings in the road, helped to focus on the real essence of the scene.

Reference Photo for View of Gex Town Hall from houses and church

Below you can see the watercolor painting, “Gex Church View”, that resulted from using this photo as a reference.  The lamp that you can see at the top of the photo wasn’t included because it distracts from the main focus of the scene and draws the eye up, when it’s important for the art to draw the eye into the painting. 

The painting is for the Gex Book.  The back of the Gex Church is to the left, and there are houses to the right. Looking down the street you can see the dark grey turret of the Town Hall; it has the same distinctive clocks on all four sides. Beyond is the Geneva valley.  In the distance, Le Saleve is visible to the right.

The Importance of Color

Color is one of the things that is probably the most influential of all factors in a painting.  At least, I’ve discovered that this is true in my perception of artwork.  If the colors are appealing to me, I am often immediately drawn to a painting, and then I look closely at the subject of it.

Even though I’m strongly driven by color, it has taken me quite some time to begin understanding how to use color to the most benefit. A short, but very clear article, that I’ve found very helpful is at Indezine.com: “What Is Color Theory”.  I have also found the image of the color wheel shown on the book called  “The Color Star” by Johannes Itten to be useful.

I haven’t read Itten’s book however, since one of the customer comments on Amazon.com mentioned that his books are extremely good, but that they are rather heavy in theory and somewhat complicated. Perceptions of complication are somewhat subjective, and whether it’s the case or not for this book I don’t know, but I decided to wait and see if I could achieve what I wanted with paintings before committing myself to further study!

The thing about cameras and computer screens, and printers for that matter, is that most of them all portray the same colors a bit differently.  Some cameras are set to give a very bright, colorful rich image, while others tone down a lot of colors and almost give a blue tint to everything. My larger camera does the latter.

So it’s important to remember the colors and lighting of a place or subject that you saw as best as you can. Some artists do quick sketches and watercolors on site so that they can better remember the essence of the light and atmosphere of the place.  Then they combine this with the use of photographs to provide more details.  James Gurney has good articles on this and many other subjects at his blog Gurney Journey; one in particular on this subject is Using Photo Reference.

The reference photo shown below is somewhat limited in its color appeal. And there’s a tourist in the way! (No, I didn’t take this photo, but I was there.)

Reference Photo for View of Le Saleve and French Alps from Gex

I decided to portray what I know of the atmosphere and feel of the place in the following way with the painting, “Gex View Across The Valley”:

This painting too is one I’ve just completed for the Gex Book. There are spectacular views from the town of Gex, which is located in the foothills of the French Jura Mountains. In this painting you can see to the south of Gex, across the valley towards the city of Geneva in Switzerland.  Le Saleve is the first set of hills on the other side of the valley.  Le Saleve is in France and not Switzerland, the Swiss border ends pretty much at the foot of Le Saleve. The mountains beyond it belong to the Mont Blanc Massif.

Draft page layout Gex Book

Here you can see how it looks in the page layout for the book.  In a previous post I mentioned that the other sketch that wasn’t yet completed on this page (which happens to be this painting, and is now completed) would be of a view down the valley towards Bellegarde – well, turns out it wasn’t – this one also faces towards Le Saleve! But there is a view looking down towards Bellegarde in at least one painting still to be done for the book, and it will be painted and shown here on DweezelJazz Art blog eventually.

Look out for Proper Perspective

Many camera lenses distort.  Even with anti-distortion on, the distortion of lines, especially towards the edges of the image, can still be very pronounced. I was so surprised when I started looking more closely at just how much distortion can go unnoticed by the casual glance at a photo. It’s almost as if the eye makes up for it.  But in a painting, I think it’s a different story. If the perspective is odd, then it most likely will get noticed, especially if it’s unintentional!

Making the Art Unencumbered and Expressive

It’s super easy to get lost in all the detail that a photograph provides.  It can become an all-consuming goal to try to portray the scene or subject in all it’s complexity, with the utmost accuracy.  Unless this is done with extreme care, this can quickly kill the feeling, life, and atmosphere of a piece. It’s very good to consciously decide in advance how much detail is wanted, and how it will advance the aim of what the painting will convey.  Always staying aware of atmosphere, feeling, and even the emotions of the piece will help to maintain the focus of the goal for each painting.  It will also help to consider these things when choosing the predominant colors for a painting.

More important than detail or accuracy is the conveyance of meaning, atmosphere, life, and what the artist finds uniquely interesting in a scene or object, rather than to present all its details in accurate duplication.  Individual expression and viewpoint is what makes creating and observing art so endlessly fascinating.

"Portrait of a Horse" in egg tempera by Nat Wildish

Selling art seems, at first glance, to be a fairly easy thing to accomplish.  But there are loads of things to learn.  This last couple of weeks I’ve been concentrating on understanding how to make prints.

I’ll have two sources of artwork for prints: my egg tempera paintings and digital artwork that I paint on the computer.  The egg tempera paintings can either be scanned or photographed in order to create prints; I’ve chosen to photograph them.  The digital paintings need to be created, right from the start, at the correct size and resolution in order to print properly.  It doesn’t work to paint them on a ’small canvas’ document and then expect them to print larger.  And scaling the document below 75% or above 120% digitally doesn’t generally give good results.

This means that right up front, before I create the artwork, I need to decide what size prints to produce.  I’ve spent the last week reading four really good books on the process of printing, considering all the options, and how to process the digital files to be sure of color consistency and sharpness of the print.

I’ve been able to find out how to color-manage the whole process, from the camera, the monitor, right through to the printer, and how to either work with a print service provider, or to print them myself with a printer at home. I’ve found out what papers and inks to use, what calibration and profiling equipment is best, how to process Camera Raw digital files, and how to use Photoshop to implement the whole process.

Access to the online library Safari Books Online, created in 2001 by O’Reilly Media, Inc. and The Pearson Technology Group, has enabled me to thoroughly and quickly research the subject.  This service is fantastic.  For a monthly subscription of $42, it allows unlimited reading of all of their books and training videos, or for $22 they allow ten books per month.  They offer a great deal at several different subscription rates, click here for more details about the subscriptions.

There’s no obligation to continue the subscription beyond one month, and it can be canceled at any time, so long as it’s cancelled before the start of the next monthly billing cycle.  They have loads of really great informative books; buying each individual book would incur a very large expense.  There’s a good introduction to the service in a review written a year ago on developerlife.com – reviews.  This helped me to get a better understanding of how the service worked, and then I looked into the details on the Safari Books Online site itself before subscribing.

"Maldives Palm" in egg tempera by Nat Wildish

I usually take notes when I read textbooks or informative books.  This allows me to quickly access the information I find most helpful in a book, in a layout easy for me to quickly scan visually.  It means that, in the future, I don’t have to sift through the entire contents of a book to find the details that I want to use.  And while I’m taking notes, it allows me to process and understand what I’m reading at much greater depth.  I find it a very efficient and effective way to work. Doing things this way, I rarely need to keep a book once I’ve read it.

I love the idea of being able to access this information online without having to waste the resources it would take to have that book in print, delivered or bought from a store and then to not need it after reading it for a few days.  It’s a much more environmentally friendly way to go about things, and one that my way of working naturally accommodates.

The Safari Books Online has been vital in enabling me to access really good books on a subject that is otherwise extremely difficult to get a good grasp of.  And until I read all four books that I chose to read on the subject of printing, I really didn’t feel equipped to move forward with the process.  The Safari Books Online service also provides what they call ‘Rough Cuts’, in which authors provide the text of a book while they’re writing it.  One of the books I read, which was absolutely brilliant, was a Rough Cut for a book that isn’t due to be printed until July of this year, 2009.

These are the four books I would recommend on the process of taking a digital file from creation to print:

1. Inkjet Tips and Techniques An Essential Printing Resource for Photographers by Andrew Darlow
2. Mastering Digital Color: A Photographer’s and Artist’s Guide to Controlling Color by David Saffir
3. Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications by Claudia McCue (this is a ‘Rough Cut’, due to be published in July 2009)
4. CMYK 2.0: A Cooperative Workflow for Photographers, Designers, and Printers by Rick McCleary

Safari Books Online cover many topics and are constantly expanding their library.  Searching their library is a really good way to find excellent books on different subjects.  And at the bottom of each book description they also include Amazon.com customer reviews, which is a really excellent way to gauge the relevance of a book to your needs.

Next, I’m going to read a book specifically on Digital Painting, “Photoshop Studio with Bert Monroy: Digital Painting” by Bert Monroy; then I’ll read a couple of books about digital SLR cameras, and about the one we have in particular, so that I can competently take photos of the artwork.

After that, well… I’ll see if there’s anything else relevant to my art goals.

"Fisherman's Bastion, Budapest" egg tempera painting by Nat Wildish

I hope to have most of the research of this type finished within the next month.  And then I can really get to work on the art, which is, after all, the most enticing part.  I hope that sharing some of my process in researching and in particular the books I found on printing can be of help to you.  If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions I’d be very happy to hear them.

Capturing silhouettes with a camera can create some fascinating images. Some ideas for looking at scenes and subjects in new ways.

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Photos of the sky in many variations, colors and lights.

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In whatever form we take to express ourselves, if we include in it something unique about the way we see the world, it’s an art.

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Looking at the effects of photographing the same subject with a different focus.

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Using patterns and texture to enhance images.

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Use of the interaction of colors to enhance foregrounds and backgrounds, emphasize a focus, and to give feeling and atmosphere to an image.

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Enhancing photography images with reflections.

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The influence of an individual’s unique visual perception of color, culture, and background on their interpretation and taste in art. The physical effect of specific colors on the human body.

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