The creative process

I thought that today I would give you a bit of an insight into my creative process - yes there is a process, which may come as a surprise to those of you who are aware of my lack of organisational skills in general!

I paint mainly from photographs at the moment, although all of my Greek paintings were painted from real life.  I paint from photographs because it is convenient and not effected by the weather - I can paint from photographs at any time of the day and I can paint subjects and places that are not easily accessible.  I also like the freedom of having time to complete a painting, to revisit it over several days and to make changes and additions as  I need.

This is the photograph that I used as inspiration for my last piece.

And this is the finished product. As you can see it shows only a scant resemblance to the photo, but that's kind of my style - when I first started painting someone said to me that photos are for accuracy - paintings are about impressions and feelings. I stick by that because I know that accuracy is not my thing. I changed some of the foreground around, mainly because I couldn't get the lines of the boats to look right, but also because I wanted to draw the eye more to the castle in the background and the sweep of the perspective.

Colour is my thing, though - I like to use vibrant colours that capture something of the feeling of a place - again they are not accurate to the picture but they are what I see when I look at or think about the place I am painting.  

So there you have it, that's how I went from photo to painting in this case, that's my creative process.