You will choose a landscape photo you took of a place that is meaningful to you. If you are using a photo you did not take, you will need to give credit to the person you personally know who took it. YOU MAY NOT USE PHOTOS FOUND ONLINE.
Use the guidelines below to choose a good image. Upload it here to be printed.
When choosing a landscape photo to paint, you can consider things like:
- Layers: A clear separation between the foreground, middle ground, and background can help you break the landscape into layers. This makes it easier to work from the back to the front.
- Light and dark: A good sense of light and dark, with an obvious light source, can help newer artists see volumes. Flat-light photos can be more challenging.
- Exposure: Avoid over or under exposure. Overexposed photos can wash out the values in the ground and lose color information.
- Quality: Choose a high-resolution, good-quality photo.
- Distortions: Look out for any distortions in the photo.
- Color composition: Consider the color composition and depth of the photo.
- Contrast: Avoid extreme contrast.
- Silhouettes: Silhouettes can lack depth and variation of color, but you can play with this to create an interesting effect.
- Size: The size of the painting can affect how you use the photo. In larger paintings, you need to clearly define each element, including the ground and anything in front of or behind it.
- Format: Decide on a vertical or horizontal format for the painting. An asymmetrical composition can feel more organic, while a symmetrical composition can feel more formal.
You can also crop and edit your photo to make your painting more dramatic and incorporate design elements.
In the photo above, there is a lot of detail — tiny leaves and grasses — but overall, the main shapes are clearly defined from one another. In a well-differentiated photo, the shapes should be differentiated enough that you can outline each one with ease, as shown below. The shapes that are outlined are the major or dominant shapes, those that serve as the foundation of the composition, not the smaller details.
