In reality is there is no one best way to work. It's what's best for you. But I'm going to tell you about a couple of approaches that I've heard about here on youtube, then tell you what I prefer and you can decide what you think is best for you. 'Sound good? Okay. The first approach is from Lena Danya and that's to have several paintings going at once. With this method, when you get a bit tired of working on one piece, you go and work on another for awhile. So if you imagine it like a circle, you're constantly rotating between paintings, but making sure to finish each one. The other approach is from Lisa Clough and that's the do one painting at a time approach. This one's a lot easier to explain than the first one. It's basically exactly what it sounds like. You just work on one piece until it's finished, without touching another one. Now for me. I lean more toward the do one painting at a time approach. I used to stop working on something, because I was a little bored with it, and start working on something else I was more excited about and as a result, I ended up with a lot of unfinished pieces. If I'm really struggling with my current piece, I might make a sketch for my next one on paper, just to keep momentum going. But other than that, I really don't work on more than one piece at a time. If you work in oils, you might have to do the work on several paintings at a time approach, because slowly oil dries, just to be able to be working consistently. Like I said, it doesn't matter what approach you take. What matters is that you're finishing work. You need to have finished pieces, because if you don’t, you’re not learning. Besides not finishing things, doesn’t make you feel very good about yourself.
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I think it’s very important to have a place for your reference photos, so when you’re ready to paint something, you’re searching all over your computer for that photo. So I have this file among the pictures in my computer called, “reference photos” and anything that I think I might want to use for a painting or drawing, whether it’s a photo I took myself, one I have permission to use, goes in this folder. Even doing just this one thing, makes things so much easier for me, because when it’s time to start a new project, all I have to do is go to this folder and choose one of the photos I’ve saved. Another thing I like to do is name photos that I’m particularly interested in. Not every photo I put in the “reference photos” folder will necessarily become a painting or drawing, but if I feel one will, because I just love it that much, I like to give it a name so I can find it easily. I don’t know about other people, but I remember names I give things more easily than I remember the names they had when I downloaded them, or what name my phone gave them. If I need to credit the photographer, I will include his or her name in the title as well. The name I give to the photo may not what I end up calling the resulting painting. It’s just to help me be more organized. For example, I named this photo, "Duck On A Pond", which is probably what I'll call the painting I'm going to make from it. The last thing I’m going to talk about is not the something I’ve been doing so far, but it’s something I think I’m going to start and that’s writing a list of the painting projects I have in my mind that I know for sure that I want to do. First of all, it’s not good to keep things up in our heads. Writing things down is very freeing. I heard someone say, your brain is for having ideas not holding ideas. The second reason for doing this is it’ll help me be organized a bit more than just having all my reference photos in one place, because when I finish with one project, if I don’t know what to do next, I could refer to my list and there’s my next painting. Just like with the names I give to the photos, the titles I write down on this list, don’t necessarily have to be what I’m going to call the finished pieces. They just have to descriptive enough that I know what it is, because this list is for me. Quite a big one in fact. Just because you know what something looks like well enough to recognize it, doesn't mean you know what it looks like well enough to draw it without looking at it. The only way you get to that point is by drawing it over and over, either from life, or, from a good reference photo. Below are two sketches of the same puppy. The one on the right was done without the reference photo. The one on the left was done with the reference photo. You can see me drawing both of these in the video below. |
Sara MillettPainter of portraits and wildlife Archives
November 2023
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