Here is a partial quote by Matisse: "Exactitude is not truth." There it more to what he said, but I want to show how I sometimes work from a reference photo and "make it my own," without being a slave to the photo. When you can put your own feelings into a painting and be in control of having it look exactly like you want, then you're getting somewhere as an artist! If you can achieve this, then the viewer of the painting will have the same feelings that you did at the time.

Here is the photo I will paint from. It was one of those scenes that literally jumped out at me the moment I saw it. There were two things that I decided right away that I would have to edit. Can you guess what I was thinking? The large rock on the right was one of them, and the clutter in the front of the river was the other. My reasoning: the rock was overwhelmingly large and would take over; the river needed to be a simpler "lead-in" to the scene I wanted the viewer to focus on.

Here is my initial pencil sketch where I've reduced the size of the rock, uncluterred the river, and placed things exactly where I want them.

Here is what I call a "value block in," using only burnt sienna and ultramarine blue, thinned down accordingly with Gamsol. The shadows on the snow are thinned down the most. My reasoning: This way I can get an idea of how the lights and darks are placed in the painting and whether they are connected or not AND whether they lead your eye to where I want it to go or not! I usually let this partially dry, unless I'm too over-eager to start the painting.

This stage shows that I've applied a lot of paint over my block in and I've tried to make it the same value (lightness and darkness) as the block in above that I was pleased with. Note the size of the rock and that it does not overwhelm the painting! The colors I've used in the painting are: ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, alizarin crimson, cadmium yellow medium, cadmium lemon, burnt sienna, viridian green and titanium-zinc white. My reasoning: The fewer colors I use, the more unified the painting is. I can mix every color I need from the one red, two blues, two yellows, and the addition of the burnt sienna and viridian green was just to help with my darks (ultramarine blue and burnt sienna is my favorite dark) and viridian for a larger range of greens than just using blue and yellow. I could have done without these two colors altogether!

"Winter Spotlight," 16x20 Oil on Linen

As you can see, I've eliminated a lot of stuff going on in the background to help further spotlight the tree. I had liked leaving some of the original block in showing in the background to the left of the big tree, but I finally decided like it or not, it was distracting to the "spotlight effect" I had originally wanted. I took some of the block in still showing in the river and painted some darks around it and softened a lot of edges to suggest underwater rocks. I also reflected more snow in the water from the snow banks.