This post is in response to a question asked of me by someone about her painting. As my answer covers many points that could be of use to others I’ve turned it into a blog post (all images used with permission).
She writes:
” Hi Lawrence, I have been working on an oil painting from a photo of my son running into the sea. I put it aside for ages because I feel a bit stuck! It’s nothing like as accomplished as your work and it’s the first time I’ve used oils for years. I wonder, if you have a moment one day, whether you would take a look and give me some feedback? “
My reply:
I’ve had a look at your work and here are my thoughts. Generally speaking it’s a good piece of work with much merit, a good solid foundation to build on. There are several areas ripe for improvement…
It relies too heavily on a specific photograph
This is a point I can’t emphasize enough as the other points flow from it. Cameras don’t look at the world the way human eyes do of course, so they usually don’t record what the brain needs in order to recognise the scene as ‘realistic’. We’re so dependent on cameras that we don’t usually notice this as we see photographs everywhere we look – online, on television, in newspapers and magazines and in our own homes. So we have a generally accepted cultural belief that all photos are accurate, despite that photos vary widely in quality and type and any simple analysis you carry out will show up their failures to capture a scene.
However these largely unnoticed failures in photographs become immediately apparent in artwork based closely on them because artworks say to the viewer ‘I’m obviously not a photo’ so the usual acceptance we have of photographic flaws is no longer ignored by the brain and the artwork doesn’t ‘look right’ or seems ‘incomplete’.
For this reason, I have learned to use photographs as an aid to artwork in conjunction with on-site observations (sketched, mentally noted, etc.) Best of all is probably doing the whole painting on location (“en plein air”) if it’s not too large and can be done in one sitting, but this post is about the sample painting being critiqued and so about working from photos.
If I’m not going to do a plein air painting then I’ll still look hard at the colours in different parts of a place I’m standing in, as well as the tones, relative distance of components, etc. because I know these things don’t record well photographically and are usually distorted in photos. I also take lots of photos of the same place – typically over a thousand per visit – so that I can draw conclusions in the studio from a batch of photos where those conclusions might not be supported by one or two individual photos.
It’s also necessary to learn about the way photographs distort reality so that you can overcome these aspects and ‘put them right’.
So, I’m deducing that your painting is a very good rendition of a particular photo, but because that photo no doubt lacks the information needed by the human brain you end up feeling that ‘something is missing’ or you’ve done all you can but you’re ‘stuck with where to go next’ to improve the painting. I went through all of this myself once upon a time.
Okay, so we need to look at the obvious flaws most photos taken by non-professional photographers display, as can be clearly seen copied into the sample painting.
Flaws in photo = leads to = same flaws in artwork, if copied literally.
(This is not to say that there won’t be other flaws in a painting which are not photo-related of course.)
Design and Composition are probably the most vital things in making a painting, but firstly I’m going to deal with Colour and Value.
The colours in most photographs are not correct (particularly in photos from cameras most people own)
As general rules to bear in mind while acknowledging that particular lighting conditions in a location may vary (observation rules here) the following should help but it really is to be taken generally and not specific to a time or lighting:
a. Sky Colour
When looking away from the sun during daytime, the background sky colour is a greener-blue and is lighter in value (tonal value – light to dark) than the sky overhead, which is more of a red-blue. So, Pthalo Blue vs. French Ultramarine for instance. In the sample painting there’s a suggestion of this but it isn’t explicit enough, isn’t sufficiently made clear. This matters when cloud structure (examined below under Design and Composition) is taken into account. Many photos record the sky as one colour, which it isn’t.
b. Cloud Colour and Value
This varies widely depending on time of day and lighting but around midday on a sunny day clouds are usually white or grey with violet-grey undersides/shadowed sides. In the subject painting these have been made more or less the same colour as the depicted sky.
In general the sky is lighter in value throughout than the land/sea.
In bright light, waves are often lighter in value that clouds (i.e. whiter and brighter).
Depending on the focus of your painting and where you want the viewer’s eye to go you can play with these things.
Colours are often ‘duller’ in photos than in real like, though this does not apply in the sample painting.
b. Sea Colour
Apart from the waves there’s very little sea colour on show in the sample photo – this isn’t a criticism necessarily. Sea colour varies hugely depending on lighting. It’s a very dark horizon in the sample painting but it’s difficult to say whether it ‘works’ or not for the lighting as the sky isn’t quite right, and it doesn’t really work for the current composition.
c. Wave colour and value
This varies so much depending on lighting and direction of light. Value creates form. The waves in the sample painting are too uniform and unvaried in colour, value and design. There’s a reasonable attempt to depict their three-dimensionality and variety but it doesn’t go far enough.
d. The Sea Apron
The ‘apron’ is what I call the area of wet sand that projects from the sea and has either been vacated by the water a few seconds ago or is in process of doing so.
In the sample painting it’s reflective of the sky (and bottom of the figure), which is often the case in nature.
The sea apron in life usually has a pattern of overlapping curves left by waves, but this isn’t apparent in the sample painting (more in Design and Composition below).
e. The Sand
Wet sand is light and reflective. It has form and shallower, lightly-shadowed areas. This may not be the case in the photo but it is in real life, and people’s brains know this even if their consciousness doesn’t, so it has to be painted accordingly. Sand is difficult to paint, but as with anything once you have observed it a lot and noted its characteristics and how they relate to other elements it becomes much easier. No one can expect to get good at seascapes by copying a photo.
Design and Composition
Design in the sample painting first, then Composition:
Design of individual elements:
In the sample painting the cloud structure needs to be improved. It looks as if the same cloud has been repeated for or five times at random across the sky. There needs to be variety of form. Even random couds in a real sky hint at structure. In general, clouds in paintings work best if they have a clear structure and design. Cloud should be thought of as an ‘area’ like the sea or sand and so occupy areas of the sky rather than being discrete ‘objects’. In so doing it is part of the composition, designed to support the focus of the painting.
The waves need more variety too, as well as simplification.
They may be continuous lines of white foam in the photo used but this needs to be altered to show waves that are part unbroken ‘walls of water’ and part areas of surf. This design could form a pattern which is part of the overall composition of the work and works towards the goal of the composition (as with the clouds).
As already noted, the sea apron needs to show the overlapping pattern we see in life.
Lighting in the Sample Painting
We can note that in the painting the direction of light (primarily from the sun in this case; other sources being reflected sunlight) comes from above left, particularly apparent in the clouds and the figure. This is fine, but not especially dramatic. More dramatic would be back-lighting or perhaps low, evening lighting. That might not be how the reference photo is, but if the painting is to be eye-catching and to evoke the feelings and mood of the scene then redesigning should be carefully considered.
Reference photos should provide the germ of an idea for painting only, a reference photo is not an artwork, no matter how carefully copied.
In any case, even if the current lighting direction is to be used (though, why?) then the light and shadow areas need to be more contrasty, more obvious.
The Figure
The figure is really too small, and it doesn’t do much of a job in compositional terms. If the figure were larger and areas of light and dark better defined then the results would be better. The placing of the figure with the head just below the horizon is probably not the best position. The fact that the head is similar in value to the horizon sea-strip makes it look connected to that and so makes the head appear more distant from the viewer than the rest of the body.
Suggestion: if the lighting was backlighting then a narrow ‘fringe’ of light would appear around the edges of the head and so differentiate it from the sea-horizon-strip. Using backlighting would have to apply to the whole of the scene, so the waves for example would look very different. If you look for examples of backlit seascapes in photos and paintings you’ll see what I mean.
Composition in the sample painting
There certainly isn’t space here to talk about the principles of composition, which is well-studied and covered elsewhere in numerous books and articles.
However, here are a few quick pointers, as they relate to the sample painting. A successful composition needs areas of light and dark primarily; these should usually be asymmetrical in a naturalistic painting. There are many variations and ‘standard compositions’ artists and professional photographers use, from ‘L’-shaped compositions to ‘dartboard compositions’ to ‘broken-up’ compositions.
So, let’s screw up our eyes and look at the sample painting (above). This reduces colour and allows us to see the values, the pattern of light and dark. What do we see? Mainly a dark strip of sea-horizon, a dark beach and a vertical figure linking the two. A more interesting, dynamic composition is needed.
To begin with, if you have to use a reference photo…
Hint: Not all of the photo has to be used. Just by cropping the photo (in this case the sample painting as I don’t have the reference photo) a much more interesting result occurs:
A painting needs to be designed – reference photos are great as inspirational jumping off points. In the case of the sample painting a more light vs. dark wave pattern could be established that relates to the dark figure: the figure area of the painting becomes part of the pattern of light and dark which is the backbone of the composition.
Another approach to this kind of composition which would also work for the sample painting would be to make the whole sea lighter in value than the figure, including the dark-horizon-strip. Consider this painting by Joaquin Sorella y Bastida.
The shapes of the figure’s head, arms, etc., form the dark parts of the composition against a pale-value sea. Also, fragments of the dark figure in the form of more distant figures balance it compositionally speaking. The same principle can be seen in this photograph:
If you didn’t want additional figures then the same purpose could be served by distant darker areas in the elbows of waves, dark reflections or other features. This is about balance in composition.
Note also how well-defined the areas of light and dark are in these examples, giving a dramatic effect. Another painting by Sorella serves to further illustrate the point:
General Conclusions: What all of this means for the developing artist
As always, study the work of leading seascape artists and learn from them. Seascapes are a difficult form of painting with much subtlety involved. Hundreds of visits to beaches are also needed to observe the sea and sky in different modes in order to fully understand what’s going on and to portray it in a painting.
Seascapes with figures is a further specialised area. It takes the painting of hundreds of seascapes with figures to get really good. If it’s just a one-off painting by an artist for personal reasons then this fact has to be appreciated and taken on board when evaluating the results.
FURTHER RESOURCE
I currently offer a critiquing service for paintings*.
Send a good photo of your painting to me through the contact details on this website. You can pay by PayPal via the website or by cheque/check. The cost is £35 or US$45.
For this I will give a critique of your work along the lines of the one above but without the generalised comments about how to paint and not nearly so wordy as above. The critique will be in the form of a list of good points, a list of areas for improvement and suggestions.
*Please be aware that many people are very sensitive about their artwork so you should only use this service if you are truly open to your work being critiqued or constructively criticised and will not feel bad or inadequate if areas for improvement are pointed out. It’s to help people grow as artists and that can only happen if they are open to these things.