Part 1 How to simplify a busy scene from a photograph, with Colin Joyce

Paint along with LP

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ How to work from photographs

■ Learn to simplify your subject

■ Quick tips on composition, and using colour, tone and contrast

Your reference photograph for this month’s project: a busy scene at Anstruther harbor

There’s always a trap, especially when working from photographs, whereby you include absolutely everything you see in your painting. The result is a busy, complex and confusing scene, which contributes nothing to the initial excitement you felt at the time. I’ve done it many times, but now find I can stop myself before it’s too late.

This month I want to offer advice to help you distil the scene you see in front of you, and to create your own painting and not simply a copy of a snapshot taken on a day out.

Your focus

Begin by thinking about what attracted you to the subject in the first place. What is your centre of attention? Where do you want the viewer to look? One way to tackle this is to try different compositions by creating thumbnail sketches. Should it be landscape or portrait format? What should you leave out? Are there objects you want to alter or even add that will help tell your story? Eventually, with lots of practice, you’ll be able to produce these small sketches very quickly, or even skip them altogether, but I do recommend you build them into your working practice for quite some time at least.