Friday, May 25, 2007

Mt Aleck, Elder Range

When fossicking around in my studio studio I came across a sketch book that had been using for an earlier paintings that I had completed. This sketch of Mt Aleck is part of the Elder Range in the Central Flinders Ranges. The resulting painting can be found on this page at my website.

Preparation in the way of a sketch is ideal to plan ahead to see if the main key elements will work before starting on a painting. It can save a lot of time and grief as you will see straight away if the design and perspective will work.

For those that do use reference photos; there can be a lucky shot of a scene where everything is located faultlessly. However nature isn't always accommodating with trees positioned perfectly to what you have in your own mind or the ideal place. It is up to you to replant it and what a better way than trying out new positions with a sketch. Works for me! razz

If you would like to try out some of my own photos for reference material for your paintings check out SnapShots and see if there is anything suitable..... you are very welcome to use these free images for your artworks. There are minor conditions for their use but for most people it won't effect them. Please read the 'Sticky Note' and 'Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License' on SnapShots before using these photos.

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4 comments:

Making A Mark said...

I very much like to work from sketches rather than photos once I'm back home. I think it's mainly because once you've done a sketch you begin to really understand just how bad a camera is at recording values in the scene you were looking at.

Susan Borgas said...

Yes and it also gives you a much better understanding of the subject. I remember struggling with an Australian native pine until I sat down amongst them and made sketches. The structure of these trees are now embedded firmly into my brain.

Brandon Sheley said...

great work, and nice painting too :)

Susan Borgas said...

Thanks so much for your kind words and visit Brandon. :D