Inspiration Check for your References
Julie Gilbert Pollard (Ep.25) paints from what is called observation. That means she isn’t making up her subjects in her mind. She’s looking at something real, be that a photo or life (as in plein air.)
If she decides to work from a photo for the next painting, she has an important ritual she absolutely does not skip.
She looks through hundreds of photos.
And this isn’t on her phone with a finger swipe. Or even printed out onto physical photo paper.
She makes sure to look at them on her large computer screen so that they have light coming through.
These are photos Pollard took. Looking at them large and with light helps jog her memory to the sensations of that specific place. It brings her back and helps her experience the photo more fully.
This is important because it makes it easier for Pollard to tell when a reference grabs her. And that’s how she knows THAT’S the photo she’ll paint.
Now she can move to her next step in her reference process: Editing.
Put it to Practice:
Working through a painting takes resources. It takes paint but more importantly it takes time and energy of you as an artist. How many times have you painted something and just not been into it from the get go?
This may be because you don’t have steps in your process to get the right reference into your hands in the first place.
So whether you use others’ photos (with copyright permission) or your own, try holding a small amount of space to at least ask the question: do I want to paint this?
Yes, some days - no matter your answers- you may still need to just paint to paint.
But begin to notice which references sparkle to you and which don’t. You may find that this makes a bigger difference than you realized later in your process.