Top Tips for Painting from Photos
1.Before starting to paint, spend time studying the scene. Figure out what to paint, where to crop, what to leave out, what to focus on, what do you like, what is less important.
2.Colours can look different in photos. Compare with real life. Beware of camera exaggerations.
3.If you have a great photo, consider what point in painting it would be. A great photo is probably best left a photo.
4.Never print your photos. If you can, use a digital image and view through a monitor.
5.Choose a subject you wish to paint, then go and take a photo, composing it carefully.
6.Use your own photos.
7.Photos often lie! Observing shadows from life, they have a subtle warmness or coolness, even a hint of colour. In a photo these subtleties may be lost or flattened.
8.Cameras change the colour balance and values.
9.In photos darks get darker, shadows and darks don’t print well. Observing with the naked eye, shadow areas hold lots of details. Even deep shadows retain a lot of colour.
10.In a photo, a camera changes the contrast and colours, flattening dark areas into very dark shape. One way is to hold a photo up against the light. Paint the variations a little lighter than what you see, remembering they are not really that dark in real life.
11.When we look at a scene, we only focus on a small portion of our visual field at a time. Everything else is blurry. Modern auto-focus cameras often capture everything, erven distant objects, in focus and make them appear sharp even in areas where our eyes would never see so clearly.
12. Detail – remember to squint. If you don’t see it squinting, don’t paint it.
13. A good rule of thumb painting from photos, lighten up the darks and darken the lights.
1.Before starting to paint, spend time studying the scene. Figure out what to paint, where to crop, what to leave out, what to focus on, what do you like, what is less important.
2.Colours can look different in photos. Compare with real life. Beware of camera exaggerations.
3.If you have a great photo, consider what point in painting it would be. A great photo is probably best left a photo.
4.Never print your photos. If you can, use a digital image and view through a monitor.
5.Choose a subject you wish to paint, then go and take a photo, composing it carefully.
6.Use your own photos.
7.Photos often lie! Observing shadows from life, they have a subtle warmness or coolness, even a hint of colour. In a photo these subtleties may be lost or flattened.
8.Cameras change the colour balance and values.
9.In photos darks get darker, shadows and darks don’t print well. Observing with the naked eye, shadow areas hold lots of details. Even deep shadows retain a lot of colour.
10.In a photo, a camera changes the contrast and colours, flattening dark areas into very dark shape. One way is to hold a photo up against the light. Paint the variations a little lighter than what you see, remembering they are not really that dark in real life.
11.When we look at a scene, we only focus on a small portion of our visual field at a time. Everything else is blurry. Modern auto-focus cameras often capture everything, erven distant objects, in focus and make them appear sharp even in areas where our eyes would never see so clearly.
12. Detail – remember to squint. If you don’t see it squinting, don’t paint it.
13. A good rule of thumb painting from photos, lighten up the darks and darken the lights.
TIPS TO HELP YOUR ART DEVELOP
1. Cover the board in any colour to remove all the ‘white’ from the background. White spaces can be scary. Best to cover with a mid-tone colour all over. A good background colour is a mix of Titanium white, Ultramarine, and Burnt Siena mixed thinly and rubbed on. Leaves a very cool mid-tone grey.
2. When dry, use a charcoal stick or chalk to outline the sketch for your painting, referring to your initial sketches.
3. Remember to simplify your work – doors don’t always need handles, people don’t need detail, leave out the car parked in the photo.
4. If using mountboard, your painting must be framed behind glass.
5. Time spent studying your reference photo and sketching is time very well spent, and helps build your confidence as you begin to paint. Why not make a sketch of the photo, or even a part of the photo that you wish to make a painting of, then paint from your sketch, turn the photo over and make only occasional reference to it. This gives you more freedom with your choice of colours when painting.
6. Brushstrokes/Palette Knife/Rollers
Mix horizontal and vertical strokes to avoid hard lines, and make your strokes about 1” max in length.
7. Remove ‘mistakes’ immediately with tissue and clean water.
8. Turn painting and reference photo/sketch upside down to get a different perspective on the shapes and colours. When painting boats and buildings, this is especially helpful, as the subject becomes a shape when turned upside down. Don’t forget to stand back regularly throughout your painting session and have a good look at how it is developing.
9. Use the largest brush that you are comfortable with. Avoid small brushes that are held like a pencil. If a brush seems too big, then it is probably the correct size!
10. To create lines, use the edge of a flat brush, rather than one long sweep with your brush.
11. Instead of using black, try mixing ultramarine and burnt siena, or viridian and alizarin for darks. They are much warmer than straight black.
12. If you restrict your palette to 5 colours (Lowry used 4) black, white, a red, a yellow, a blue you will create harmony throughout the painting more naturally than if you have a large number of colours on the palette. There won’t be any clashing of tones when using 5 colours.
13.Most importantly, enjoy painting and feel excited at what you are creating.
TONE/VALUE
Tone refers to lightness or darkness. It is used to create shades, tints and to show depth through adding shadows and highlights.
Tone/value is more important than colour to the design and success of a painting.
1. Tone/value is used to create a focal point.
2. Human eye is immediately drawn to a light against dark area, so if this is in your focal point area your eye remains in the painting and will not wander off the edge.
3. To create an illusion of depth, gradations of tone/value are used, e.g., much stronger tones in the foreground.
4. Areas of light and dark give a 3-D illusion of form to the subject matter.
3 Questions to ask yourself when standing back to look at your painting.ng. Look at these FP areas and ask have they drawn your
eye in a circular movement around the painting.x
2. What direction is the light coming from? Often the answer is ‘there, there, there, and oh there’. You need just one direction. Once this is established and
you apply your lights and darks, the painting will sparkle.
3. What tonal range have you achieved? Have you achieved the right balance of light, mid-tone and dark? Ideally, we should aim for 7-8 different tonal values
in a painting.
Usually when people are not pleased with their painting, it is that one of above has not been followed.
GLAZING and WASH
Glaze is a transparent layer of thinned paint. Glaze appears to glow.
Wash is a thin translucent layer of paint mixed with opaque pigment such as white. Wash appears to mist.
GESTALT effect (German word for shape or form) This is based on thinking of building up your painting like a spiral from the base colour.
1. Ignore any details – just paint broadly aiming for the big effect, keep your values, colours and proportions.
2. Utilise tools such as knives and rags to establish the image, rather than small brushes.
3.Once image is established, add touches of paint to suggest key details. Overall aim is to create an illusion of complexity.
4.Soften the edges a little to make the image slightly out of focus.
5.Tighten up focal area only.
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