I’ve avoided painting from photographs most of my life, especially other people’s but I am softening with age. Whatever keeps you going.
At the moment I want to do a painting based on a sketch of Lindisfarne Priory I did a few years ago. Oddly I find it harder to transcribe shapes from a sketch than I do from a scene in front of me.
I suddenly had a brain wave and I took a photo of the sketch that I had taken for the web and edited it into two photos, one for each half. While I was at it I reversed each of the halves.
I printed each half out on a4 scrap paper and then I had an A3 version of my tiny sketch. I then used conte pencil to draw round the main lines of the sketch on each sheet, turned it over on the painting surface and rubbed. Hey Presto an A3 version of the original, the right way round. I’ll use photos to help me add more texture and detail.
If only I’d thought of that when I was copying an old abstract etching of mine onto a plastic sheet for our printing session last year.