Have you ever tried to finish a painting from a photograph, that you started live? Most of my paintings to date have been from photographs, partly from necessity, and partly, (as I have recently discovered) from a lack of faith in my drawing abilities, so I haven’t needed to cope with this. It hadn’t occurred to me that the transition required a new set of skills.
In using a photograph, I found the background, even though I wasn’t using it, confused the flower shapes in a way I hadn’t noticed when painting from life. This doesn’t happen when I start with a photo, probably because I have already mentally simplified the image at the outset. Then, there was the colour change. I “know” my printer produces blued images, but as I rarely use the photo as more than an initial sketch, I was not awake to the change. My first attempts to complete the painting were more pink than the initial work.
If at first you don’t succeed ….
and I can’t claim this as success. How wooden and solid the additions seem! There is none of the airy, “leap of the page” lightness about them. There is a lesson here if I can only fathom it.
It’s an odd effect, isn’t it – quite subtle, but still there. But I do like the way the vase has turned out!
I think the ethereal effect of the original group of flowers compared with the vase as a whole is that it is only a small group with no real connection to anything and it really does jump out and hit you. Once it becomes a complete vase it is more staid though I would be over the moon to have produced your end result myself. Yes, I also like the vase.