Monday, September 09, 2019
In yesterday’s post I discussed how to become a better painter.
You might find this helpful too: the way my preliminary sketch (shown below) evolved for
today’s painting.
When I spotted
this scene I pulled over and did a quick sketch on a scrap of cardboard. And
without thinking carefully about it yet, I had included much more of the
landscape than necessary.
Then I paused for a moment to analyze what
was most important. Where was the true heart of the subject? And I realized that
all I needed was a small part of the scene. The part that captured the golden
sunlight washing across treetops while the entire foreground was in shadow.
I cropped and
re-cropped it until I had excluded all unnecessary information. What remained
is the true heart and soul of the subject.
At that point I
added a few more strokes indicating the lighting and values.
On the back of
my sketch I made written notes about the colors and light, the value structure,
and what I had found most eye-catching at the moment.
In the studio I
used those notes to create this finished painting of the final rays of sunlight
washing across the treetops on Laguna Canyon Road in late afternoon.
My point is
this: without the initial exploratory sketch I may have included too much of
the overall scene, and lost the impact of the light on the treetops and distant
hills.
But by being
willing to take chances, make changes in my initial sketch and explore other
possibilities for cropping I was able to come up with a much stronger
composition than I had started with. As I said in yesterday’s post, “BE BOLD … be willing to fail.”
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