Get into the habit of being a regular sketcher by always carrying a sketchbook and have it available for any convenient moment. There is an abundance of things around the home that can be used, from the general clutter inside the garden shed or garage to objects in the kitchen. Outside there are parks, gardens, parts of buildings or the clamour and hubbub of city streets; the choice is endless. The process of investigation through drawing will refine your visual awareness and awaken new directions for possible subject matter.
FINDING A FOCUS
How you are able to interpret what you see is also fundamental to your quest to find suitable subject matter. Images that contain a balanced composition with a well-defined focus will give clarity to a painting. Subjects do not have to be bustling with activity or depict wide vistas of landscape. A couple of flower stems in a jam jar, or other simple everyday things like brushes on a sink, can make rewarding subjects. Yet they are often overlooked, or not seen in the right way.
SKETCHBOOK STUDY
watercolour, 28 × 38 cm (11 × 15 in)
When you begin to see with an ‘artist’s eye’ you will discover potential subjects in even the most mundane situations. This display is almost a permanent feature in the corner of my studio and, though I look at it every day, until I painted it I realized I had not actually ‘seen’ it before.
HALLWAY
watercolour, 53 × 38 cm (21 × 15 in)
Still-life images can be combinations of any objects. Ordinary everyday items, perhaps of little significance in themselves, combine to make an interesting subject.
A viewfinder will help to isolate elements of a complex landscape view. The highlighted area is depicted in the drawing below.
POLPERRO HARBOUR
pen and watercolour, 30 × 42 cm (75 × 107 in)
Drawing is a more rapid method of recording the essentials of a subject as the basis for a later studio painting. In this sketchbook drawing I included a monochrome watercolour wash to register the general tonal distribution.
Because our eyes take in an angle of vision of almost 180 degrees we have become accustomed to viewing the world on a wide screen. But painting requires you to focus on the particular, much like a spotlight in a theatre selecting one element of the performance at a time. For landscape work, looking through a viewfinder can be a useful aid. This can easily be made by cutting a 7.5 × 5 cm (3 × 2 in) hole in a piece of card which, when looked through at arm’s length, will enable you to see limited areas of the landscape in isolation.
This is useful for dissecting complex subjects, such as in Polperro Harbour. The photograph shows almost the full extent of the elevated field of view I had of a harbour setting. Though there were several subject opportunities here, I was attracted to the particular part of the scene, shown highlighted, by the tonal contrast between the white cottages set against the darker foreground elements, and the dominant angle of the harbour wall, which had the effect of leading the eye into the scene. I made the drawing to record the essential elements of the view. The addition of a monochrome wash also gave a record of the main tonal distribution.
Further opportunities for developing subject matter can be found by using on-the-spot drawings for later studio paintings, or by inventing subjects by combining parts from several drawings.
GARDEN CORNER
acrylic, 38 × 28 cm (15 × 11 in)
Many suitable subjects can be found in and around the home. This corner of my garden offered a ready-made composition with an amalgam of shapes, patterns and colours.
PAVEMENT CAFÉ
watercolour, 25 × 36 cm (10 × 14 in)
This subject focuses on a small corner within a busy area of pavement cafés. I wanted the painting to portray the essence of the subject as simply as I could without allowing it to become overworked with detail.
BRINGING SUBJECTS TO LIFE
Another major determinant in subject choice will be your ability and experience in using your chosen painting medium. If you are not adept at painting figures, for example, you will be far less likely to think of using them as possible subjects. But generally, whatever you choose, the best way to get the most from your subjects is to paint them in the most direct way you can. Aim for simplicity, both in your method of painting and means of expression. Do not try to create an exact copy, or produce a photographic likeness of your subjects.
Pavement Café illustrates a small corner of a large pedestrian piazza. I selected this area because the patterns of the shapes generated a lively composition, and my aim was to try to catch the essence of the subject with the minimum of detail.
Many of the problems that will confront you when painting can often be resolved by producing preliminary studies, either in monochrome or with limited colours, to help sort out doubts or uncertainties in the interpretation of your subjects. These can be small thumbnail sketches, or larger studies similar to Garden, Malcesine, Italy on page 8. This was produced using one warm and one cool colour to establish the distribution of tonal values, direction of lighting and colour temperature (the relative warm/cool colour relationships) within the proposed image.
Preliminary studies will also allow you to try out different colour combinations in which perhaps you wish to convey mood or atmosphere. In Winter Landscape the mood was achieved by using complementary colours, yellow and purple, which when mixed gave a range of neutral colours tending to grey in the middle. This gave an unusual colour cast to a wintry subject with the inclusion of a warm sky that, combined with using a middle range of tonal values (without the extremes of black and white) gave a more muted feeling to the painting in general.
Atmosphere is obtained principally by adjusting the quality of lighting in a painting. This can have the effect of reducing a subject to just a few simplified shapes. Paintings looking into the light, for example, will dramatically change the elements of a subject into a series of silhouettes.
So, wherever inspiration leads you, opportunities for subject matter exist all around you. All you have to do is to know how to look for them.
WINTER LANDSCAPE
acrylic, 51 × 61 cm (20 × 24 in)
Creating an atmosphere can transform seemingly uninteresting or commonplace landscape subjects. I based this studio painting on a small sketch that I made in the summer months. Closely related tones in combination with a restricted palette of yellow and purple