Painting from Life

As faithful readers know, I prefer to paint from life whenever possible. (For the uninitiated, "painting from life" means standing before your subject in person, and painting what you see, as you stand there. By contrast, you do not paint from life when you paint from a photo, from memory, or from any other approach). Why do I prefer to paint from life? Let me count the ways:

(1) Painting from life is a thrill!  Something starts my heart racing and my brain brimming over when I stand in the landscape, studying to find my composition, and trying to discern the light and colors. Painting from life has a thrill factor (for me, at least) that painting from a photo simply lacks. The challenge of standing with the whole wide world around you, and then choosing the small slice of the world that you will paint to represent your experience of the whole--well, that's a WOW challenge. It is an entirely different experience than looking at a one dimensional photograph and reproducing it. Different, more difficult, and much more fun!

(2) Painting from life gives you more information to work with. For me, painting is all about learning to see. And you can't see from a photo what you can see with your eyes in person. Simply put, a human being sees things differently than a camera does. In life, you


can see nuances of color. You can see shapes more accurately. You can see spatial relationships more clearly. You can judge color relationships more successfully. All of this informs the painting process, and tends to result in paintings that are more reflective of the painter's actual experience.

(3) Painting from life forces you to select and simplify. In plein air painting, time is of the essence. Because the light is always changing quickly, you must be decisive. Without endless hours to paint and re-paint your subject, you are forced to select the things that represent the essence of the subject, and let go of the rest. Selectivity and simplification make for stronger paintings, in my opinion.

(4) Painting from life is the best way to grow as a painter. My early painting instructors all said that painting from life was the best and fastest way to improve. I took them at their word, and I'm glad I did. I have also read that painting from life causes you to develop your "style" quickly, because you don't have time out in the field to re-think and analyze, so you must call on your intuition as to how to put the paint on the canvas. That intuitive response is the key to your style.

I could list even more reasons I love painting from life. Perhaps that's the subject for a future post. Meanwhile, I will end with this disclaimer: I don't ALWAYS paint from life, and I DO sometimes use photos. That's one reason I can make some of the comparisons I mentioned above There is a place and time for everything...