My oriental poppies came into bloom on a day of excessive heat and humidity. As a rule, they blossom for a short period of time. This year, they started wilting almost right away. The only solution was to photograph them immediately.
I took several photos. None of them was an ideal compositional arrangement. If there was more time, I could sit by them and compose and paint a work.
After looking at the photos, I saw that no one single photo would work. I chose the images that I preferred.
One of the photos showed a poppy fully opened. Another showed two flowers bending over in the heat. These images combined would be the composition.
With tracing paper, I made an outline copy of the two poppies. I used black conté as my drawing tool.
I placed the tracing on top of the single bloom photo in various places.
When I found a composition that worked, I traced an outline of the single bloom onto the first tracing.
I transferred the tracing to a white drawing paper. Placing another piece of tracing paper on the composition, I started working on the value patterns. I did not trace the lines of the contour drawing, instead, I used them as a guideline for filling in the values. As red and green are middle value colors, I would need to make a decision on which value would be dominant. The painting would need highlights of light and accents of dark.
This method of creating a composition can be used with a variety of subjects from photos or from life.
|
