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
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
Here’s a deeper look at some of the paintings I did in November based on my own, personal photos.
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
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
The theme of this photo-to-painting is foliage & autumn leaves! These photos were all taken this very month, intentionally as reference photos.
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.
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.
With my US National Parks project done, in December, I found myself turning to my photo archive more and more for inspiration. Here’s the photo references for my recent paintings.
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