Beware The Reference Photo Trap!

 

"Shades of Pink"

 

Question: What does that blue diagonal section on the right side of the painting above look like to you? 

Is it a river with a mountain range behind in the distance? 

Is it a sidewalk in shadow, speckled with sunlight? 

Here is the original photo I took for reference to give you the answer.

Beauty behind bars.

 

When I put the photo and painting side by side, you can see I actually painted what I saw fairly accurately, minus the fence bars, of course. 

Original photo and "Shades of Pink" painting

 

I painted "Shades of Pink" in 2021 and it never felt quite right to me and I couldn't quite put my finger on "why" exactly. 

This spring, I decided to try again to figure out the problem. When I asked for input from my husband, and my cousin, both of them with great artistic sensibilities, it finally became clear that they were visually confused by the sidewalk in shadow and they both thought they were seeing a river with green mountains in the distance.

My problem suddenly became obvious, I had been trapped by one of the biggest pitfalls of painting from photos! 

I've known for over 30 years that sometimes what you see in a photo may not translate well into a painting, even if you paint what you see accurately, it may not look right no matter what you do.

Both of them gave me some useful advice on how I could clear up the confusion. My cousin in particular had this excellent insight to share:

Essentially, the sidewalk lacks context, there are no visual clues to suggest what it actually is, there is no grass growing in the sidewalk cracks, and we can't see the tree that is casting the dark shadow. So I could either add more detail to the sidewalk or I could emphasize the cast shadow. 

"Shades of Pink" with more shadow, less "river."

I didn't want more details in the background pulling the focus away from the poppies, so I chose to increase the shadow. It only took a little bit of time and paint and like magic, a painting that has puzzled me for years already looked so much better!

Now, that one lonely poppy bud really looks odd and I think the painting needs a few more buds to balance it out. Since they don't exist in the original photo, I used a little digital "copy and paste" to test out where to place them.
 

The One has become Five.

I think it is an improvement! It is these kinds of visual puzzles that make the art of painting both frustrating and very exhilarating when you finally solve them. Now it's time to get out the brushes and paint those buds in for real.

Happy creating!

>^-^<

Tina