Painting At Mangawhai - Composing

[Richard Robinson]

"Mangawhai Estuary" 14x17" Oil on Canvas by Richard Robinson

I visited beautiful Mangawhai today and painted this in between the showers (those are raindrops on the canvas). Very lucky with the weather and the light overall though - I thought I was only going to get grey lighting today so I'm very glad I took the chance and came out here. You can see from the photos below how I've taken liberties with the composition. The view of the headland is only available another 50 metres along the beach, but while walking to this spot I was struck by the beauty of both viewpoints so I decided to include them both. So you can have your cake and eat it too.

[Richard Robinson]

It's a street scene from San Francisco which discusses using the internet to source photos for your paintings and also working from a black and white photo in order to free up your colour design.

[Silvana M Albano]

Weellll... I would like to know what the following workshop (workshop23) will be about... 

[Richard Robinson]

Yes thanks Stu I have been considering a composition workshop.

[Stuart J. Gourlay]

Richard, I am going to stick with my statement that "Too many people just copy your work and don't come up with their own compositions". I believe that you may reinforce this by rarely, if ever, critiquing landscape paintings done from the artist's own reference photos. Since composition is such an important an element of painting, it is my belief that even though copying can result in improvement of technique, it completely eliminates the need for improvement of composition. When you did the series of four still life workshops, you did require each artist to come up with their own composition. Perhaps some challenges focusing on landscape composition might be valuable to many of the artists on this site. Stu

[Abdiel Rodriguez]

Great painting! Really love the way you make those shade areas so colorful. looking forward to have the same ability to capt color in shade.

[Richard Robinson]

Yes it's up to everyone to choose what they do. I guess the answer would be to provide more photo references of other scenes not used in the demo.

[Dorian Aronson]

Hello Stu.

I am one of those people who do not have the ability yet to come up with my own compositions. Hopefully when I have more painting years behind me I will.   I am just so happy to try and copy Richards work.  I am here to learn Richard's style of painting and the best I can do right now  is try and copy his painting from the demo.  You and so many others have so much more ability.  There is nothing stopping you or others that have more ability to come up with their own compositions and they do.  Smiles : ))

[Stuart J. Gourlay]

Richard, if you use this idea as a challenge, paint the demo of an entirely different scene than your photo references.   Too many people just copy your work and don't come up with their own compositions.   Stu

[Dorian Aronson]

Hello Richard

Happy Painting to you!  Smiles : ))

[Richard Robinson]

:-) Yes that did cross my mind.