DESIGNING A PAINTING:
Sometimes nature will provide an artist with a view that exactly fits what they
want to show in a painting; a perfect reflection of what he or she is drawn to
in what they are seeing. However, a number of times there are a few minor
things that, if changed, will result in a better painting. There might be some
object that distracts from the subject. Or perhaps there is too large an area
without changes in color or value. If rendered as is, the painting would have
a boring, "empty" area in it. The photo and painting pair below show where
several of these types of changes have been made.
A much greater challenge exists when it is the overall feeling that a grand
panorama invokes which the artist wants to portray. In the examples below
there was no one photographic view that captured all the desired elements.
Animas Forks Study #1 This scene depicts a miner's shack in the
ghost town of Animas Forks, high up in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.
In the future a larger painting may be created from this study.
One of the challenges for this study was to depict the lonelieness of this iso-
lated community amid the majesty of mountains surrounding it. This was
especially challenging as there was no place where a good mountain view
and good cabin view could be captured in the same photograph. Also, none
of the photos showed the cabin at the angle settled on when the painting was designed 26 years later. Further complicating this, the lighting conditions
changed from minute to minute and the slide film used was limited as to the
range of values it could capture, resulting in loss of detail in the sky.
The preparatory drawing made a pleasing layout, but its values did not give enough emphasis to the looming nature of the mountains behind. Should
a larger version be made, it would be interesting to experiment with allowing
the mountains to extend higher in the painting while reducing the size of the
building relative to them.
