I fee I need to paint from reference in order to learn but I had this idea of my little onion guy being worried about leafcutter ants. So I tried to create my own reference photo with Photoshop. I couldn't find any pictures of ants crawling on a log that had them large enough to create the scene I had in mind.I took a mossy log and several separate close ups of leaf carrying ants and jigsawed them together with a rough painting of my vegetable man.
I was happy with the result. The log was great reference but the ants are all lit in a different way. Yet, the picture doesn't stand out as being wrong. However, as I started working, I was faced with the difference between photographing a scene and painting it.
Specifically, depth of field. In this photo, there are transparent circles of light near the center of the shot. That's not something you see in real life. It's an artifact of the lenses in a camera. What would be the point of duplicating it in a painting? If I succeeded, I'd be imitating a color copying machine.
Lighting raised another question. In all my reference photos, the leafcutter ants are shot against black to contrast the brightness of the backlit leaves. Do I put a light source behind that center leaf? I opted to go darker with a blurry suggestion of leaves for contrast. The leaf at the center of the onion looks fantastic with lots of contrast. That kind of glow is what I was chasing.
To the right is my painting setup. I learned that my tripod is slightly short for me to paint standing. Out in the wild (my backyard) it hasn't been a problem. I have a portable camp stool and I'm always up for sitting down. Still, if I'm ever free to visit garage sales in the future, I'll keep an eye out for taller ones. Enlarge the photo and you'll see that a started using gouache like watercolor, thin and transparent. I worked around the leaves to preserve the white of the paper. You can also see that I used a grid to help me with my drawing. It matched the one in Photoshop.
I heard from several sources that every painting goes through an "ugly" stage and you have to just plow through it. In this painting, I felt there were times when parts of the painting worked better than they ended up in the final. I was pleased with the log because, instead of trying to analyze the bark, I worked messy yet ended up with something that looks very realistic when you take a step back. I put in the ants and leaves and knew I needed contrast to make them stand out. I played with the background lighting as I worked. Chasing the lens effect was fruitless.
Added the moss in a random pattern instead of driving myself crazy trying to copy the photo. Suggested trees in the background. Put the kid in cool shadow to contrast the leaves.I don't know how I could blur the onion boy as much as he was in the photo but I did soften his edges. I put some darks and highlights on the ants and put shadows under them and the leaves and decided to call it done.
One of my goals moving forward will be to do less experimenting on the page. It builds up layers of gouache can crack, especially in a sketchbook. I need to make decisions about lighting, values and contrast before I put the paint down. Happy Easter/2020. -- Tad
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