Using Photos for Painting Tip 2

'Homage to Crow Creek'. 4x4. Pastel. Karen Margulis

It's a long drive back to Georgia from New Jersey. So what does one do in the back seat of the car all day? Look over my notes from the workshop. Think about everything I have to do when I get home. Plan my next trip! That takes a couple of hours. But what to do for the rest of the day?

Play with photos on my iPad!

That is a great way to pass the time! And I have some suggestions that will make it fun and give you some fresh painting ideas. Here are a few photos from Stan's farm.

I took many photos on this trip and most of them aren't very good photos. But I take photos for painting reference. I will use them to inspire me and remind me of the place. I will use them as fodder for my imagination. If the photos are too good I will be inclined to copy them. In my first tip I recommended painting from small photos. The idea being that you can't paint what you don't see.

Often artists use photoshop to manipulate their photos for painting reference. What if you don't have photoshop or don't want to bother? My son introduced me to a fun photo app called Snapseed. It does very basic photo editing like straightening, cropping and adjusting color,contrast and brightness. But it also has some fun tools such as grunge, retro, tilt, black and white. It is very easy and user friendly. I load a few photos on my iPad and see what I can do to my photos.

Now I can pull up these 'Snapseeded' photos on the iPad and use them as photo references for paintings. Snapseed allowed me to quickly and easily simplify my photos giving me new possibilities for paintings.

 

 

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