Farmer's Market Flowers

Diane Mannion, FARMER'S MARKET FLOWERS, 6x8" oil

One of the plein air groups I paint with decided to sit in the middle of the farmer's market and paint.  Really not my thing!  Don't like painting with folks looking over my shoulder and telling me about their relative who's also a painter.   Or the most repeated sentence... "I can't draw a straight line."  My answer usually is, then you would be a good painter instead of an architect or an engineer.  Painters like lines with movement and character... not straight!  

So instead of painting, I walked around with my camera and shot a few reference photos.  Thought this would be a good time to do a demonstration of how to use photos as reference and NOT BE A GIANT COPY MACHINE!!!!

My reference photo

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Finished painting.  

I was intrigued by the shadows, colors, and light.  Photo was not "copied" but used as reference.  Everything was rearranged to create the composition I wanted... not what was captured by the camera.  I hope this is helpful.  Heard a lot of grumbling in my class last week when I asked students to use their own photos (not magazine photos) and not copy them exactly!  Please paint paintings, not photographic reproductions.