Class Notes - Got Photos?- Week four.

 My kids come home from school, open the fridge and ask the eternal question - what's to eat? There is a difference between just ingredients and a meal.
Most of us take tons of photos, store them on the computer, where they sit until we have long forgotten what inspired us to shoot them in the first place.
Well, if you are stuck for something to paint, pull out the photos, and learn to cook.
You might be amazed what you can come up with if you start looking at them with a designer's eye. Subject matter aside, look for interesting shapes, and value patterns of light & dark, then start sketching. Sometimes turning a photo upside down helps you to see major shapes and simplify the elements. Simple ideas, communicated simply, are the most powerful: patterns of trees in the forest, or just interesting diagonal and vertical shapes. Take that kernel of inspiration and see if you can fit it to a sound compositional idea, arranging the shapes so they lead the viewer through, and around.
You might be sitting on a gold mine, right there in your own refrigerator.

We could always make Lemonade

Are all of your photos lemons? Two photos, from above, and two sketches came together for this layout. I emphasized the diagonal shapes and used strong verticals to break up those shapes. If the viewer was a squirrel it would be possible to enter at the bottom follow the diagonals to the trees, scamper up the trees, through the branches, down the other side, into the distant trees to do the same thing.
I have used colors in the middle and background, that come forward instead of receding. This breaks a few traditional rules of distance in the landscape but serves to abstract the view in a way that suits me.
That doesn't mean I won't tweak it a bit while it is still wet.

Class Notes: Clearly Glass

For next few weeks in class we will be taking time to focus on glass. First, clear glass, that being the simplest. I love to paint glass and take a less-is-more approach that allows the eye of the viewer to fill in the blanks. The clear bottle at the top is only visible because of its highlights and that's the key to clear glass - it has to be clear. Shading on the inside, darker or lighter, makes the glass look dirty or even take on the appearance of something that is ceramic. Add a strong highlight and it will look shiney but it won't be clear glass. The painting below deals with colored glass; more about that later.