PAINTING CHALLENGE - AGAIN

HERE IS THE CHALLENGE:

Find a photo reference you don't mind doing more than once.

Choose one of the ELEMENTS of art (line, shape, value, color, space, size, texture) to create your area of EMPHASIS (Sometimes called domination) in your painting. Choose one type of composition (such as cruciform,bridge, spiral, radial, S or Z shaped, cantilevered, horizontal, vertical, etc.) compose a painting with those two things in mind. 

For example: You might choose texture as to be dominant in your painting of a building and choose a vertical composition. 

You might choose a Z shape composition to paint a country path landscape and choose strong values as your element to emphasize. 

(good paintings have several design elements, but the one you choose should be dominant above the others.)

Then on the next week, choose a different element to emphasize and a different composition, USING THE SAME REFERENCE PHOTO. You can focus in on a part of the reference or change as little or as much as you choose. Be creative. 

Today I issued a challenge, one I took about eleven years ago. In fact, I'm going to refer you to the original blog I did. Look at Feb. 2008. There are six posts named Painting Challenge, Painting Challenge #1, etc. You can check those out to see my original reference of an alstromeria plant and five of my attempts. Then look at August of 2008 for #7. It seems I never posted #6, which you will see below. In this one I used a "checkerboard" composition (overall plan), and the design element I chose for this one was color again, using a blue/orange complementary color scheme. 

This was either four or five, can't remember. I wanted to try an S shaped composition. I think the focus was on repeated shapes, like the small white shapes to direct the eye into an S shape. 

Below is my 2nd challenge painting, only completed and matted. I was probably most happy with this one. If you look back at the blog you'll see that I chose a radial composition. 

In the original challenge, we only had two hours to paint each one, after the initial planning and drawing. Since I am not a quick painter, that was a bit challenging for me too, but it was helpful in deciding at an early stage whether or not I was going to like the painting. 

This might sound like work, but it is a great tool to help get away from just "copying" a photo reference and making it uniquely your own. It forces you to look at how strong your composition is, as well as to ask yourself the best way to present what you love about that picture. And I think it's fun. Hope you do too!