Painting from life is better than photographing with a camera, in my opinion. As a plein air painter I get to manipulate the information I see before me. Mother Nature is wonderful but not perfect so a few changes to enhance the visual appeal of a location is fun and challenging.
This is a painting from the Wekiva Paint Out last week. "Forest Path" is a little dirt road in the Wekiva Springs State Park. Each morning you can find the resident flock of wild turkeys ambling down the path, picking their way through the palmettos.
My original intention was to include the turkeys in the painting. I had sketched my composition noting where the birds would be placed. As the painting progressed I decided turkeys would overload the painting and infringe on the feeling of tranquility I was aiming for so I left them out.
The photo on the right shows the actual scene as it looked while I stood and painted. If you look closely you can see a few subtle changes from photo to painting. A couple of obvious changes were to give a greater bend to the path and a gentle leaning curve to the sabal palm on the front right.
Mother Nature is the best teacher for a landscape painter. The majority of time I paint in my studio using photos (I will talk about pros and cons in a future post), color notes and small paintings done on site en plein air and memory. Plein Air Events give me to opportunity to get out in the field with other artists. Other times I just get myself out..yes, usually alone...to "recharge my battery" as Bean Backus used to say. Painting exclusively in the studio can cause my work to become stale.
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