Day 7 30 Paintings in 30 days

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Day 7 30 Paintings in 30 Days Jan 2017

My Camera is My Friend

I've come to depend on my nifty trusty phone camera as a handy dandy pocket sized tool for my painting trade.

In the good old days you held the painting up to a mirror to see it things were working together well.

You did it to break the mindset that had you married to doing things a certain way, as though that was the only way which is a kind of blindness for a painter.

Alice Edwards 1949 --
Time for Tea
5" x 7"
oil on canvas board

You did it to rest your mind and to get a fresh take on the blankety blank painting. You did it help catch flaws in design, composition colour, values. You did it to find the problem areas and so on.

Occasionally, if the Painting Gods were in your corner you could see the good things too.

That last is a really tough thing for an artist. We're notoriously hard on ourselves and our work.

You're always looking to fix things and you can wind up fixing the thing to death. I know because I've done it. We all have especially in the beginning of our learning curve for painting and drawing.

So where does the camera come into things?

When I photograph a painting and it's reduced to phone size. I immediately see if it works, if it reads well. I see the oddities in composition, design, colour, value and various size relationships. Things jump right out at me.

Then I have it, the HaHa moment, right before my very eyes.

When I know what the problem is I can do something about and it'll all look better.

Saves me a lot of angst.