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Painting From Photographs & Sketches – In The Artists Studio
Painting From Photographs & Sketches – In The Artists Studio
Some artists may say that its not wise to use photographs as reference material for your paintings, but many artists find that this is a valuable additional resource to use in the creation of their original paintings.
There are a few rules of thumb to take into consideration when using photos as reference when working on your art back in your studio:
- It’s better to never slavishly copy a photograph, photos flatten the view, and darken areas so you cannot see the detail
- Photographs are covered by copyright laws, so to closely copy someone else’s photo is not advisable, always use your own
- You can rearrange the elements and composition to suit you, i.e. if you are painting a seascape move the boats around, if you’d like to do a sunset painting but the sun isn’t going down in the right spot move it so it creates a better composition, paint some people or figures into your landscape to create better perspective
- Change the colours, you don’t need to stick to the colours in the photo, use your imagination and pick an interesting colour combination for the scene
- You can lose some of nature’s wonderful colours, shades and tones in a photo, when out on location make a colour swatch of small squares of oil, acrylic, watercolours, pastels or coloured pencil, to show the different shades of colour that make up the scene, create a reference of the dark, mid tones and lighter values for each colour for your painting
Photos are a very useful tool to add to your repertoire of references for your art, used by painters of all skill levels, in addition to sketches they can be very useful in capturing a scene quickly, from different angles, and to show the shape of objects, landmarks etc. to refer to later on back in your studio.
There is nothing better than to spend a day out getting to know the scene, soaking in the atmosphere of your chosen location, really feeling the place before you put brush to canvas, you can make sketches or small studies in oil, acrylic, watercolour, charcoal or coloured pencils, on small stretched canvases, watercolour paper, canvas board or wood panel, or just use your sketchbook.
Take your camera to quickly capture the scene before going back to the studio to work on larger canvases or larger works on paper, incorporating your sketches and small painted studies into the work, happy painting!
About the Author
Stella Dunkley Contemporary Artist
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Willemstad in Colours
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