When painting from photographs, I often take creative liberties. I thought I’d share an example of this with a sketchbook page I recently posted on my instagram.
Below is the photo I used as reference. There are three main changes I made from the reference photo to final painting—orientation, cropping, and color.
Orientation & Cropping
When photographing my subject, I decided to shoot it in a vertical format—getting as close as I could to maintain a high resolution image, while also including the majority of the flower in the frame. I was not too concerned about the background as I was not planning on including it in the painting. When beginning my painting, I thought about how this very slim vertical subject was going to fit the width of the horizontal sketchbook spread. I didn’t want to leave large areas of empty space. I wanted the negative space surrounding the flower to be made up of interesting shapes that interacted with my subject. To activate the negative space and create a more dynamic composition, I decided to rotate the image and zoom in so I was focusing on only a few blooms.
Color
Although I do often change colors to strengthen the composition, in this case, it was not necessary. However, I had been painting a lot of white flowers and needed a break. A silly reason but true. By keeping the relative values the same, I was able to change the blossoms to any color I wished. In my creative practice, I enjoy the freedom this gives me as I can play with saturation and color relationships. When I paint, I will often adjust colors to make the composition more harmonious.
I hope this helps open your mind about taking creative liberties in your own artwork. If you want to learn more about composition, you may be interested in my book An Artist’s Guide to Evaluating Composition. This book discusses the effects different design choices have on composition and includes possible questions to ask yourself as you assess your work throughout your creative process regardless of subject matter and medium.
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