Finding the Ah-Ha! with an emphasis on the “HA”…

Or maybe better said – finding the perfect or nearly perfect composition in nature and then painting it.  As a pastel artist who does a lot of landscape work, I am always looking for that ah-ha, that perfect composition that I can snap a photo of and use as a reference for a painting.  The “art” of doing that is to not create such a perfect photo that painting it would do no justice, but to find something unique and interesting that calls out to you!

Hay bales are such things.  The way they lie in the fields, how the shadows are, the slope of the field, the sky line.  Maybe the sky isn’t so interesting, but another day you might find and shoot an image of a fabulous sky that would be a great reference for a painting of bales.  So combine photos for reference in your paintings.   Do quick colored sketches to see what works.  Try some different papers; push the colors; experiment….that’s how you get the ah HA!

The last couple of weeks I drove a lot of miles around south central Montana, looking for some interesting references to photograph as well as some points of interest to just stay and paint.  Accomplished both…I drove out to the Indian Caves and photographed the beautiful cliffs and valleys that were filled with wild yellow clover and lush grasses from the late spring and excess rain.  There was an abundance of water in creeks that normally would be dried up by this time of year.  On a couple of afternoons, the hot days brought in storm clouds and a threat of rain or hail with thunder and lightning.  The skies were none less than dramatic scenes which were recorded for later paintings.  My goal was not to be still painting en plein air when the storm skies came in near, but to be safely in my car or abode snapping shots of interesting skies!

So when I go out to paint, I take my camera and shoot lots of photos along the way for reference later.  My advice is to not get caught without a battery charger for your camera or at least know you have a fully charged battery for the day’s adventure.

I load these on my laptop in a photo editing program and keep them indefinitely.  Occasionally I will go back to digital images that are several years old and pull them out as a reference for a new painting.  The fun thing you can also do is photo enhance the images if you have a photo editing program like Photo Shop or similar programs.  Many will allow  you to review and save your images in different lighting – like warm and cool colors, black & white or sepia, etc.  Then you can also manipulate your images for really interesting effects.

It’s a whole different art form to manipulate your digital images and sometimes you just find something that says “ah HA!” to you…some of my best paintings, using reference photos have come from not so perfect photos…

I have altered an image in a few different ways to perhaps not suggest a painting of any, but to illustrate a way to look at one image differently and maybe come up with a painting that says ah HA!  So take lots of photos and manipulate them and see if you can get the one that makes you create your work of art!