My concepts and ideas for paintings come from my imagination but once I get the idea that I want to paint I pose models, usually friends and family. I paint from life as much as possible but it is almost impossible to get children to set and pose from life and it takes so long for me to paint the figures that photos are more practical, I’m very careful to use photo’s as a guide only. It’s death for an artist to just copy a photo, successful artists that I know always work from life as often as possible, this is critical so when we do work from photos we know how to interpret them, Even when I paint from life I use the model only as a guide, changing them to look the way I want them to look. I love to paint children. There’s an innocence they have that I never get tired of trying to capture on canvas. |
