Critique of photo for a painting

images are copyright protected to the individual and are not for use other than in this post as a learning tool.

Desert Scene: Working out a composition

(above) Original Photo of desert area with wheel dominating the scene. Wall blocks viewers eye from easily passing through to the upper portion of the scene.

Artist would like to paint this historic scene and does not have the opportunity to re-shoot image – So here are a couple of options in keeping with the integrity of the sceen.

This artist only inquired about composition for this critique session
CJ Rider

Encaustic

Encaustic Demonstration

Check out a few pics from my latest Encaustic Demo= we had fun!
Everyone participated in experimenting with the wax.

check my website for a series of Encaustic Workshops and more!  

http://www.ridercreations.com/

Thanks!
CJ

Tip on acheiving VALUE balance in your art

Many paintings fail due to poor value balance.

If a painting is nearly all one value, it will lack life even if it is correct compositionally.

One way to see value is to:

Open image in photoshop
At the top of the screen select: Image/mode/grayscale
At the top of the screen select: Image/adjustments/posturize
set for around “5”
with experimentation of the numbers in step #3 and 4 you can see that the higher the setting the more detail shows up.

the idea is to not have the detail and only see larger shapes of value (light and dark).
You can do this as a pre-painting step – run your image through this process and then reference this print-out to make sure you preserve proper values as you paint.

You can also take a photo of a completed painting and run it through this process to see if you have the needed value changes within the piece.

If you have difficulty discerning subtle color changes – You can also use this idea on a color photo to isolate or enhance an area of color

 

Image Posturized to view light and dark patterns