This small painting was done as a 30-minute demonstration during a workshop for the Dartmouth Art Society. The theme of the workshop was 'Painting from your Holiday Photos'. My aim was to show how to use photos for painting without copying them exactly.
What attracted me to this scene was the wonderful evening light, which I remembered from the time the photo was taken. The photo contained a lot of detail in the boat, along with a lot of ripples in the water. But, the light was what I wanted to concentrate on so I applied an all-over wash first, mixing warm and cool colours on the page. Once dry, I quickly added some harder-edged, wet-on-dry brush strokes to describe the hills, the boat and the darker ripples.
With watercolour ~ less is more.
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2 comments:
I do love this one David! I am trying to do the same with my pictures that I use as reference...
Thanks Brinda.
If I'm working from photos, I try to imagine that I'm actually there. As such, I know that the light changes very fast and so I paint as quickly as I can. I find that if I get in this frame of mind it prevents me from labouring too long over a painting, and helps to keep it fresh.
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