Painter IX Creativity

4

Photo Techniques I: Pastel, Watercolor, and Oil

There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

—Pablo Picasso

4.1 Introduction

This chapter introduces a few techniques and ideas for transforming your photographs into artistic interpretations that emulate the look of traditional drawing and painting media, such as pencil, charcoal, pastels, watercolors, and oils. I use the word transform in the context of basing an artwork on a photographic source reference image. The artwork that results is an “interpretation” or “painterly rendition” of the original photograph. Your source photograph serves as an inspiration and foundation ...