I want to have something substantial I can show for day 50 of #StayHome, but I don’t. It has, however often crossed my mind that the reason I don’t like to work from photos, even my own, is that the work never stays as loose and fresh as I want it to. So I’m going to try and achieve that with my sketches from my own photos.
This over-the-top piece is a result of trying to hard to be loose , but still, it’s something I want to work towards. When the photos are my own, the storytelling is my own too, making it a more personal point of view.
Here is the piece in reverse order of how I sketched it.
It would’ve been a stronger sketch if I stopped one step before I did, don’t you think?
Sketch Away: Travels with my sketchbook 
I like the last one a lot with all the squiggly lines!
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Thanks Laurie. I’m a squiggler for sure!
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I often think a painting should have ended a bit earlier in my own, in art instruction books, galleries but no, yours with the calligraphy type work, additional warm colors – Oh my thank you for asking this humble viewer about your art, You Are Are The Artist!
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Annie thank you for your opinion and kind words. Yes, I’m always the artist, but the person that goes back and studies my art making is kinda like a different person and is interested in how others view it too. But you are right, the artist decides whats right for their work 🙂
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Hi Suhita, Actually, I was thinking the same thing as I began scrolling down, before I got to your last sentence. The second one from the top, for me, has more of a sense of immediacy and freshness, the essential elements fully there, though I can understand how it might have seemed “not quite finished” at the time. But I see the energy of the squiggly lines of the trees and shading in the final version as pulling energy away from the truck and the bold poles and wires. I like your work and couldn’t do what you do, so it feels a bit awkward to be critiquing it.
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Diane,I’m always happy for an opinion, I never feel tied to them, they just help me see it through someone else’s eyes, always a helpful thing!
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Agree, one step before had a lovely feel to it. I’ve found that I know prefer painting from life, I think with photos you get too much detail and the need to ‘copy’ kicks in. I have just tried and cropping or obliterate parts of photo with sticky notes or drawing over the busy parts on the reference. Then the mind can pick or choose what to paint and see and little easier….
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great ideas, caroline, anything to turn off the need to copy everything!
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this happens so often!! and I wish the temptation was easy to control.. I like the trucks shadow in the first photo and the rest in the second photo..
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