This video was for an online tutorial session run for the IEA. It shows how a painting can be created in less than half an hour from a photograph or, normally, from a live model.
Sketches of this kind are often made by portrait artists as they get to know their sitters, and what pose would best reveal their personalities. With the addition of photographs, sketches like this can be used back in the studio for developing a formal portrait.
For another IEA tutorial, this demonstration shows that photographs of a subject can be used as the starting point for designing a studio painting, but warns that it is only too easy to fall into the trap of simply copying the photo without using it to focus the viewer's attention on the real subject and the story you want to tell about it.
I used a different approach when making this third video for yet another IEA workshop. Rather than show my working step by step, I summarise the history of the still-life tradition and show some examples of works by fellow-artists. As is always the case, the aim of this demonstration is to encourage the painter to think more carefully about the challenge of painting what could easily be an over-worked and boring subject.
This is the first in a new series of videos containing elements of design for you to consider when planning to produce a painting based on photographic reference.
