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I love to paint outdoors, plein air, when I can, though sometimes I do paint from photographs in the studio. If I do use photographs, I like to also have a study, done on the spot, to use as well. 

This is a study from my latest outdoor painting session. It was evening. See how long the shadows are? The light was warm, and as I painted, I was mixing the colors I saw in the landscape very well. I could stand back from the painting, compare it with the actual scene, and the colors matched.



I did take some pictures of the scene as well. This is what the camera saw:

Where did all that blue come from? The white balance was on "auto." The "cloudy" setting might have been more accurate, but I like the color my eyes saw better. Incidentally, those marshmallow-looking things in the photograph are hay bales wrapped in plastic.

I recently had a photo session with parents who wanted an informal portrait of their one-year-old. This will be more of a sketch than a detailed portrait... while he still has his baby cuteness.

When doing a portrait from photos rather that life, the photographs have to be really good.

For you camera buffs out there--I used the same camera that I use for all my portraits: a digital Canon Rebel XT SLR. It allows me to shoot both RAW and JPEG files at the same time. I love RAW mode! It captures detail even if I mess up with the exposure settings or the lighting isn't right. I been able to recover what I thought were hopelessly underexposed images in RAW mode.

 

I shoot on low contrast because I don’t like the exaggerated contrast and saturation of commercial cameras. Even when I used film (remember those days?), I went to a lot of trouble to use professional quality portrait film. It just makes a better image to work with. I have to be able to see details in the shadows and in the light areas.

We had a lot of fun and got some great pictures!