Plein-air to studio!
An artist lament I hear regularly is that a fresh initial study, whether studio or plein-air, did not translate into a satisfying finished work: I often hear the refrain “but I prefer my initial study”. There is of course, nothing wrong with preferring the study – it is after all, not lost to the world. According to Eugene Delacroix “Perhaps the sketch of a work is so pleasing because everyone can finish it as he chooses”, and to paraphrase Joni Mitchell : “Something’s lost, but something’s gained, in (painting) every day”.
That said, I’m sure that you would like your developed work to stand alongside the study, equal and distinct. In the following video, I outline a few ideas that I have found reliable:
In summary:
- Use plein-air sketch as prime reference – photo should be secondary
- Keep things fresh – something is often lost transcribing sketch to painting
- Scale often has an impact on composition and painting methods
- Aspect ratio of canvas/paper may not be the same as the sketch
Here are a few related ideas:
- Something will be lost – the almost abstracted first look at a subject perhaps – so something must be added – perhaps a graphic design element or emphasis. This is what the Group of Seven, and especially Tom Thomson did, their full size paintings being much more “Art Nouveau” than the sketches;
- An image itself has a natural scale, so decide what that may be or change the image – perhaps re-study to interpret on the new scale;
- When you scale up “mechanically” i.e. measuring or gridding, the overall geometry should of course work out. However, even here there can be issues – we seem to scale up an overall picture space and then make elements within the space smaller than they should be. Let’s say something is a quarter of the size of the picture space – do make sure this element is a fully sized quarter in the larger format;
- You can’t just scale the brush – brushwork is going to be different. Although using a bigger brush is one thing, you need the brush to move in new ways – perhaps consider additional studio techniques that might help: wet on wet, impasto, masking, rollering, sponging, palette knife;
- Colours that may look saturated on a small scale will wash out on a larger format – more colour!
- Similarly, line and value work differently with scale, the effect of scale on line work particularly is often underestimated – resulting in somehow “spindly-looking” line effect;
- Cropping for paint-suitability and size-appropriateness is invariably a good idea. Many photos, even professionally taken photos, do not necessarily make the best compositions in paint. Size can be a factor too. I would almost assume that a photo can be improved in some way – that’s one of the benefits of a composition sketch!
Examples
Painting in 3 zones
One great approach is to think of the painting in terms of three segments and then tackle each with a view to creating contrast between foreground, mid-ground and background.
Different artists may split up the picture space differently and it’s your call as to how you divide things up. In the above example, my main objective was to split the very similar greens into different zones to prevent them from all merging together into one big lump of greenish-ness.
The key then is to tackle each with a view to creating contrast between the segments. Using atmospheric perspective to set a degree of chromatic intensity for each zone will create a natural perspective. Different brushwork, values and colours could also be used to split up the scene. This will help define focus too.
Example
In this nice example by Sheila Bell, we see the principle clearly, chroma and colour the foreground, some definition with less colour for the island and the far shore misty and greyed out. The sky too, greys out towards the horizon.
Exercises
- Draw or paint from a preliminary study, planning for changes in scale or emphasis. Perhaps note the ideas that you wish to include, asking yourself questions such as: Will that brushwork translate to a larger format? How would I tackle this in another medium? What is it that I like about this study?…..How do I keep it fresh?
- Take a plein-air study or photo reference and split it into three distance zones, then develop it as a colour drawing or painting, making choices to emphasize the differences between zones. Pay a little attention to ensuring that the three areas do not look like “cardboard cut-outs” of course – however not much!