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Reference Photo
Click on images to see painting.
I love color and painting gives me the opportunity to experiment with many color combinations. I spend a lot of time thinking and planning before I put paint to paper.
I always try to carry a camera with me and take many photos of interesting things I see around me. I paint from these reference photos. I've found that sometimes the worst photos make the best paintings because I don't feel the need to try to replicate a bad photo. Instead I have the freedom to explore new colors or change the value (darks and lights) and contrast of the original image.
For example, the subject of the painting "Yellow Rose" was a rose I cut from my yard and brought it inside just before the start of a rather nasty storm. I took the reference photo at night on my dining room table. The photo was small and blurry. In the painting I exaggerated the contrast in order to give the flower more depth and brightened the colors so that it looked more like daylight.
In the painting, "Princeton Plaza Orchids," the reference photo was taken on a rainy day from the outside of a closed flower shop window. You can see in the photo on the left that glare from the window showed up in the photo and the background is rather dull. I decided to make the background full of color and contrast.
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