I started getting into film photography during my hiatus from painting, so naturally when I started painting again I started using my film photos as reference photos. Things aren’t always like what you see with the naked eye on film so I’ve found it helpful that it gives a bit more of a barrier between object and overall image. Missing details force me to improvise

This first one I painted about a year ago from writing this blog and was one of the paintings that convinced me to start painting again. The ability given using a film photo – one that was taken on a $2.50 camera I thrifted which subsequently blacked out the forest in the back and had no focus – to look at something like water and say ‘that’s not blue, that’s green and yellow ochre’ opened up so much more creativity for me. A part of why I quit art for so long was a struggle with perfectionism. If I couldn’t make things look real I didn’t like it. But playing off a photo that already brought out yellow in the river let me explore new way of using colour.

I did this next watercolour some time in February – someone had jumped just into the edge of the frame of the film photo so I wanted to create a version that didn’t need to crop out the edge of a face. This one was much more true-to-life than my gouache painting – I even decided to leave out the pink clouds and keep the white of the paper as the clouds instead. But getting the tiny details of the boat in watercolour gave me a lot more confidence in my watercolour ability. Unlike 7 years ago I have so much more control over every line.

One more watercolour/film photo side by side. These bold blues in the mountains stood out so much more in the film photos versus the ones I took on my iPhone. I’ve built up quite a big collection of painted film photos now, across many mediums and sizes.

One more recent film photo to painting is this view of San Josef Bay. It started out so easily but maybe because I was trying to finish it to submit for a show it became overwhelming and a little out of control – particularly when I got to the trees. I painted it in a smaller size in gouache first and it was so quick and effortless too so the comparison of the process was discouraging. When I had it mostly done (but not in a way I was satisfied with) I took a long break and painted another large canvas. And then I started to repaint parts and brightened the sky and the figures. I think I’m getting closer to the right track but I haven’t worked on it in so long again.

Wanting to reclaim my ability to paint on a large scale, I started my second large canvas from a film photo – Between Flights at Ganges Harbour. This process was so much easier than the last – I think especially because so much of it is just clouds and water and has such a clear, large focal point, it was a lot easier to break down into basic elements. And I LOVE painting clouds and water. It started as a watercolour in my sketchbook and that influenced my approach to acrylic. I used a lot of very thin watery layers, especially in the clouds and water, and used brushes and my hands to blend. Any time I had a new colour, I watered it down and rubbed it into the clouds and the water. My main struggle with this was figuring out (again) how to paint the trees). Like my large canvas of the lions, I decided on a sort of swirly Dr. Seuss-esque forest. I couldn’t get bogged down too much in tiny details because it was taken on my cheapest film camera so there wasn’t much detail to work with. My next task – finding a show to submit it to.