Speaking of Art Blog

Trailside Treasure, pastel, 11 x 14"

I like making a lot of changes to a composition for a painting or drawing BEFORE I start the artwork.  I use Adobe Photoshop for those changes.  Using a reference photo I’ve taken, I crop and sometimes move various objects around in the composition.  I might also play around with changing the colors in the background or simplifying the center of interest.  For my latest pastel painting, Trailside Treasure, I cropped the original image and then added the Red Admiral butterfly from another pic I took at the same time and place.

                original photo, uncropped                                                      cropped photo with butterfly added

But there’s one thing I don’t usually fix ahead of time, and that is the values or shading of objects throughout the image, especially if lots of various parts are either washed out or too dark.  Even the best image can have areas that are too washed out because of bright sunlight and/or areas that are way too dark because they are in shadow.  Both need tweaking in the artwork.  Correcting all the washed out flower buds in this pic with Photoshop would have taken way too long.  Also, the stem was too bright, and the edge of the shadow on the stem was too harsh.  And along the right edge of the background, I noticed that the shadows were way too dark and overpowering.  So I made mental notes of where I’d need to make those corrections when I would start to work on the painting.  Then I started my artwork.

So how do I correct the values while I work?  Well, that can be tricky if you are not familiar with your subject, because a lot of that correcting comes from having knowledge of how light and shadow affect the coloring of an object.  Since I’ve done tons of closeup paintings of flowers and I know how flower petals are affected by light, I can ad lib when it comes to color changes that are not shown in my reference photo.  I usually show a more gradual change from the darkest place on a petal to the lightest spot, making the lightest area very small in comparison to its size in the image.  Also, if an inconsequential place such as the stem is lit too brightly and drawing too much attention, I darken it up and soften the hard, sharp shadow edges.  Those tweaks serve to make that area less noticeable, yet believable.  Same goes for an area that is too dark, like that shadowed area of the background along the right edge.  I simply lightened it all up and used similar colors to the rest of the background in place of the really dark darks.

Tweaking values takes not only knowledge of the subject matter, but also a bit of bravado and creative flair.  You need to be willing to experiment.  If something doesn’t work, then try something else.  You are making it up as you go when you move beyond the reference photo, so have some fun and play with it, keeping in mind what your ultimate goals are.  For me, that would be to render a realistic scene that makes me feel as if I am standing right there in that place again, not just looking at a sterile, data filled image of the scene.  That’s why I feel it’s essential that I take my own reference photos.  At some point in the process of painting I want to move way beyond my photo, to a point where I can again feel the surge of excitement I felt when I first came upon the scene.  So I tweak the values as I go, trying to again capture that magical moment in time.  Knowledge of my subject and then experimental play are what get me there.