Part Two

Well thanks Aunt Fay, but there's a problem.

That method didn't teach me how to draw...it taught me how to copy!

My eye became trained to see shapes, curves, lines...but I still didn't know how to draw an object
I saw in front of me.

So, I guess it wasn't surprising that when I started to paint, I turned to photos to paint from.

I could print out a photo, make a grid, transfer it to my canvas and paint.

It worked pretty well as far as I could tell.

I fell into the habit of painting from photos.

And 'habit' is the operative word here because, in fact, I became addicted to the use of photos....to the point where I wasn't sure I could paint from life at all.


I read in a book recently:
' A photo invariably pulls the painter toward it's own color direction which often is far less interesting than the color solution the painter invents....You are a more responsive and intentional colorist than the camera will ever be...'

I think there is a lot of truth to this quotation.


So I decided to take a class in Still Life painting even though I have done a lot of still lifes from photos. I need to train my eye to see the real thing and paint it!
The first class was very basic, of course. Brush shapes, media, supports etc. We also were given a strip of paper with 9 gradations of value from white to black and were asked to copy it using our oils. An exercise in values.







And during our next class we painted a white sphere on a white tabletop lit from the side ....
Such a simple exercise but I can't tell you how happy and proud I was when I finished and saw that it looked pretty good. I was able to do it without a photo !
In a way it felt like my first real painting. So odd.

There is really no reason why I needed a photo to look at. The same scene was right there in front of me on the table as would be in a photo.
But for some reason, I didn't trust that it would be quite the same. Maybe I wanted to use a photo instead of 'the real thing' because both the photo and the canvas were flat and I knew that if I just transferred what I saw on one flat surface to another, it would be sure to work.
I just didn't trust my powers of observation of the 3 dimensional objects before me on the table.
What pleased me so much about this exercise is it proved I didn't really need a photo after all.