How I use reference photos
Many times I take my own photos, and sometimes I use photos from a social media group I belong to, “reference photos for artists.” We’re able to use photos there for free. We are not, however, free to post them online or share them. I’m still enchanted by the scenes on the western edge of the Olympic peninsula. To be clear, I only use reference photos compositionally. I generally stop looking at them once the basic shapes are laid in, and make my own decisions. For this 24x30 cradled board I put on a mid-tone ground of earth yellow, and then drew in the major shapes with chalk. After that, I put the photo away, because I find them distracting. They are distracting in the sense that i get too “precious” trying to copy a photo. I’d rather do my own artistic rendering of a scene, and what the scene means to me. I always start with the sky. This was a complicated sky in the early morning, with altonimbus clouds spreading to the west. I started with the sky using anth...
