Do You Actually Decide
What to Paint? Part 2

Do you consciously design your painting? Do you consciously decide what to paint in your painting? Do you arrange the elements, the values and the colors to achieve the most interesting and exciting result?

Or do you take a photograph of something that interests you (like the landscape below) and then paint whatever is in it and paint it the way it looks in the photograph?

Now, I will be the first to admit that in my beginning years (and beyond) I too often followed this latter course.

But, over time I discovered art is so much more satisfying when you put your creativity and imagination to use and produce something unique, something that reflects your own desires, feelings and viewpoint.

Take the above photograph for example. It is a scene I photographed in Ireland. It's a pleasant scene and it might make a pleasant painting, but what could be done to this scene to make it more interesting?

Now you might ask, "What's wrong with the way it is?"

Well, actually a few things.

1. Look at the large expanse of water with only one tiny boat in it to add interest. The water gets boring, because it's practically all the same flat color and value. The human eye likes variety.

2. Our eyes also like to see variety in size. The area covered by water in the photograph is very similar in size to the area covered by the hillside.

3. What's the star of this picture? The white boat stands out from the darker water, but the hillside is larger, provides much more variety and is more interesting.

4. The cloud shadows on the hillside and the sharp edge of the ridge line all try to lead your eyes to the right and out of the photograph.

5. Disregarding the boat for a moment, notice there's not much contrast and certainly not much drama in this scene. You can see this more clearly if I change the picture to black and white.

What can I do about that?

What can I do to bring more life, more energy to this potential painting?

What role does design play in giving the painting more life and how should I use design?

How do I decide what to paint and what not to paint?

How do I decide what the star or center of interest should be? And how do I tell the viewer where the star is?

These are just some of the questions that I will cover in this newsletter over the coming weeks as I take you through the start-to-finish process of designing and creating a painting from this photograph and how I decide what to leave out, what to put in and why.

So stay tuned.

By the way, if you missed the first article in this series, click here to read it now and understand why I think this topic is an important one.

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