December 2024’s Pink Skies: Photo to Painting

I painted two paintings this month from my own photos. Both of them were same-day skyscapes that I took with the idea of painting them. Pink Sky Power Lines What I like about the photo: Complex power lines, pink cloud, crescent moon. What I didn’t like about the photo: It didn’t really capture the overall … Read more

Arizona Photo to Painting & Palette Follow-up

Okay, so I didn’t do much painting in Arizona: it was mostly a whirlwind of family activities. I spent much of the time in surburban locales; when I had the opportunity to go out hiking, I was mostly birding and photographing as my secondary activity, not painting, which would have slowed the group down too … Read more

Photo to Painting: Late October Trees

I feel like I was precipitate in posting Photo to Painting: October Trees, since I ended up painting more trees from photos at the end of October! So here’s another post. School Tree This one’s not exactly a “photo to painting”: I painted the tree from life, through the window. I am including it mainly … Read more

Photo to Painting: October Skies

After painting the aurora this month, I went back into the archive to paint photos from September as well as several cool skies from last winter. Now that I am back in Massachusetts, it feels a lot more emotionally possible to paint my old Massachusetts photos. Suburban Aurora Like many in North America, I was … Read more

Photo to Painting: September BC Sunsets

I’m back to painting some of my own photos! Many of these were intentionally taken as reference photos, to remind me of a scene that I wanted to paint more than to create great art in and of themselves. These are my favorite types of photos to show alongside the painting because it shows how it takes imagination and heavy mental editing to get to a scene from a snapshot.

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Photo to Painting Archive: Sky of the Day Summer 2022

Watercolor late-night sunset with a cloud and silhouettes of trees and buildings.

Lately, I’ve been doing a “photo to painting” post just about each month, showcasing paintings I did recently and the photo inspiration (which may or may not be old or bad photos). Going through my old photos, I found a run of photos from 2022 that were used as inspiration for my “Sky of the Day” photos in summer 2022. While I posted those in various contexts (e.g. my year 2022 retrospective), I’m not sure I ever posted the references.

As always, you are cordially invited to paint any of my photos that you wish. See the curated highlights on my Unsplash.

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Photo to Painting: Blue November Edition

Lately I’ve been painting a lot more from my own photos, especially flawed or odd photos. Winter Sun What I I love about the original photo: that super bright blue and yellow in the distant sky! The contrast between vivid and dull. What I don’t like about original photo: The bright sky is much too … Read more