Authored By Christy Olsen.
Working from general to specific is an excellent approach to representational painting. It will help you stay focused on larger shapes to get the proportions accurate first and map out the value relationships before you hone in on the details.
Using a large brush at the beginning of your painting will help you see the bigger picture and help you avoid getting bogged down in those details. Note this is also why we love charcoal. It keeps us focused on the more oversized shapes, such as the eye versus the eyelashes.
 |
| North Light Window. Oil on board. 8x10. |
Painting from life is the best! You will have to work harder to translate what you see from a three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional canvas; however, it's worth it in the long run. The first step is what I call "shape hunting," and it's counter-intuitive because we humans have the remarkable ability to perceive depth.
To paint, we have to translate 3D objects into 2D objects. We are seeing to capture them with a brush. This is a very different concept from creating a contour drawing. You must mentally "flatten" out each object you see with your own eyes to mass in that unique shape with your brush. Pretend you are seeing a cross-section of each object and go for those larger shapes to get started and try not to get overwhelmed on the first pass.
Humans and primates can judge depth because we see with something called "binocular vision," i.e., two eyes merge each image within the brain. Monocular vision is when both eyes are used separately, so the field of view is increased, but depth perception is limited (i.e., eyes usually positioned on opposite sides of the animal's head like a horse).
This is great if you are driving a car. You know exactly when to stop before smashing into something. However, this works against you when trying to translate something from real life (i.e., a three-dimensional world) onto a two-dimensional (2-D) surface. Closing one eye is helpful for beginners. This gives us the monocular vision needed to flatten out the image. This is where good drawing skills come in handy for the more advanced, especially your perspective drawing skills.
For some of us, we do not always have the luxury of working from life, so we have to use photography. The downside of photography is that the color is almost always incorrect. The upside to photography is that it does an excellent job of translating objects into those flat 2-D shapes for us. The work is already done because the camera only has one lens, i.e., monocular vision. So if you have to rely on reference photography, do some color studies on-site with your own eyes to record the correct color. Some more advanced artists may play with the images in Photoshop to correct the color deficiency based on their own experiences of painting from life.
Go "shape hunting" at the beginning of your painting, and you will have more success later on as the piece progresses. Block in or mass in those larger flat shapes first. Afterward, you can always render, model, or blend it further. Blend more for a realistic or photographic look or leave objects less rendered for a more painterly look.
