This week in class we focused on COMPOSING a painting from reference material (that would be photos). Remember Guideline #3 from last week: The artist's job is to select and arrange major shapes to lead the viewer's eye around the painting in a pleasing way. Here I used several photos taken at a local landmark and tried to let the reference material suggest the way to compose the final painting. Now if I had developed a layout BEFORE taking the photos, certainly, I would have shot them to fit my layout; not the case here.
The Chapel at San Luis is quite famous, as much for the building itself as for the path and "Stations of the Cross" that lead up to it. The top photo suggested a path and a general sense of perspective that I liked but the tree shapes were awkward and didn't add anything to the view. The second photo doesn't have the right light but the building is going in the right direction and I will use the lower trees and bushes for reference. The 3rd photo gave me enough detail to do a credible job on the facade of the building, and finally, I did a black and white sketch to establish the compositional elements, adding the mountain shape to the right.
2 comments:
The perspective of the towers, tree and fence posts all lead to a point beyond the upward margin of the painting...very clever, uplifting device...church does not appear "fortressed".
OK, this way of thinking about COMBINING features / compositional styles / etc., from different photos is quite interesting... and quite successful in this example!!!
Thanks for this discussion.
Judith
Post a Comment