Photo Reference of View from Our Balcony

I took a photo for you to see how I rearranged the background for my painting. I did not want the painting to be about the condos, so I "moved" that whole section to our right. This also gave a nice diagonal line to lead to the point of interest, the firs and walkway. I am finally learning that you can't put "everything" in a painting and you can't use every technique in every painting.

This is the view off our balcony. You can see the painting on my earlier post.

Instructors advise thumbnails to get your composition down before you start painting. I sometimes do it in my head, like this painting. I also use Photoshop Elements to cut, paste, and move things around to "improve" my photos. Of course I also use the sketching of thumbnails. I really prefer painting from life as to painting from photos. I can see color in shadows and more details. You have to lay in your sketch and light quickly before it changes though. If you paint slowly or need more details a phot reference is the way to go.

I advise you to work from both to develop your eye to see what is missing in photos and to appreciate and simplify what is there in real life.

I made a PDF file of some painting hints, Elements to a Good Painting. You can download this file to have on hand. It is on my blog in this post, but I thought you might like to have a copy. It is also on the sidebar now.

And for my blogging link today: Richard McKinley is speaking of thumbnails in his latest post on his Pastel Pointers Blog. McKinley is an accomplished artist who came to Austin for the judging of the Annual Juried Members Exhibit a couple of years ago. His demo was very interesting and entertaining, here is my post about it. He does more studying and planning where to put his stroke than painting and his demo was a little slow, but the conversation and instruction made up for it.