I’ll often paint at home from photos I’ve taken. I usually paint better if I sit or stand in front of the scene and paint the real thing. Using this method I get bored and the paintings are boring as well. I’ve tried doing detailed drawings outside and then painting from them at home. I’ll take a few photos of the lanscape before I leave. I then choose the best view and paint it on a small canvas, 9″ x 12″. I’ll draw in a sketchbook some quick tonal sketches no bigger than 2″ wide – a couple of minutes for each sketch. I’ll use a cardboard viewfinder ( rectangular hole in cardboard ) to find a few interesting compositions. This is what I do when painting landscapes out of doors. The photos and paintings are interesting. It provides a good reference for what I experienced on the day whilst leaving a lot of room for experimentation later. I can move on or stay around as the mood takes me. It’s quick and spontaneous and a great way to spend my time. I don’t have to give careful consideration to where I’m going to set up to paint (plein air).Īdvantages: I’m in the landscape, I can hear the cuckoo and the skylark, I can feel the sun on my back. I don’t have to carefully consider what to take with me (my ‘kit’ is always in the car). I see the sketch as a starting point only I don’t attempt to reproduce it accurately-that would be too similar to working from a photograph. I go out sketching often and as frequently as I’m able to and perhaps only ten/twenty percent of what I produce will get used in the studio. I don’t decide to make a painting of a particular location and then go out sketching it. This method just works best for me in every way. Acrylic and oil pastel on paper, 11×10 inches. Recently I’ve discovered the Derwent Inktense blocks and pencils which can be used very like pastels but can also be used almost like watercolour. I use pastels for their convenience I’ve tried using acrylics and/or gouache but the pastel is just a much more immediate medium for me and also it tends to be the mark-making that interests and excites me. The sketches I make in the local landscape will usually be of locations I’ve sketched many times-some result in studio paintings, some don’t. Now I come to my much-preferred way of working for paintings. Disadvantages: it’s not how I experience the world it can be misleading the end result can become a drawing/painting of a photograph rather than of the subject. I don’t know why this is, but I can’t recall a painting I’ve done using any photo reference of any kind.Īdvantages: quick and easy permanent record of the scene at a specific time. but once I’ve ‘found’ the drawing the photo often gets lost on the studio floor somewhere. I will usually take measurements from the photo to establish correct proportions etc. Also my reference is likely to be a number of photos, some depicting some detail or other probably. Graphite and gesso on paper, 59×59 inches.īut for the same reason given in the first paragraph, I don’t try to reproduce the photograph. I have, and I do, and I will continue to use my own photographs for reference when producing a studio drawing, usually this would be a large work. All his landscapes are titled with the date/time he painted them. You can’t easily move on to another location.Ī ‘solution’ adopted by British artist Colin Bishop is to try to capture the changing scene. Disadvantages: it keeps changing, it rains, it can get windy. I’ve never attempted plein air painting for similar reasons and also because the quantity of ‘stuff’ I’d have to pack into the car puts me right off the idea the advantages are far outweighed by the disadvantages.Īdvantages: you’re out there in the landscape you are trying to depict you can see it, hear it, smell it. I tend to work quite vigorously with heavy application of graphite and heavy use of the plastic eraser and the field easel is a bit of an unstable platform for this. Whilst I won’t say I’d never do it again (in fact I have done it again since this photo was taken), it doesn’t work well for me. I’ve tried plein air drawing, to produce what I would consider to be a more-or-less finished work. I mention this because it may make a difference for some. It’s a fine distinction sometimes but, for me, an important one. But first an admission that I am not interested in producing realistic landscape paintings I see my own drawings and paintings as being my reaction to being in the landscape rather than being depictions of the landscape. I’m posting this both as a question and as a personal endorsement of the use of the sketchbook in landscape painting. Not certain if this is exactly the right topic-area for this but it’s close I think.
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