Making Photoshop do the squinting for you, Part 2

The Light Beyond, pastel, 9x12

This week in my classes we worked again from a blurred photo for the beginning stages of the painting. With a mass of busy tree foliage from this week's subject matter, this little trick helps to simplify all those tiny leaves into the large shapes that need to be blocked into the painting first before fussing with any details. (To see what we did last week with "boats" that were chock full of little details, click here: http://barbarajaenicke.blogspot.com/2012/09/making-photoshop-do-squinting-for-you.html.)

blurred reference photo

original photo

For this painting, I actually worked much longer than I thought I would from the blurred photo. I thought it had enough information in it, and it already had a painterly feel to it. I felt that the original photo contained more information than you'd want to include in a painting, but I referenced it just a bit at the end for some highlight details.

Sorry, no step-by-step photos on this one, but my post from last week's class with the boats (link above) features demo photos.