I was looking around the Paint My Photo website today and found a group focused on loose watercolours. They’ve recently started a monthly challenge to paint a selected photo in a loose style with this month’s reference being a still life of pears… and I thought to myself, why not. I’m trying to be more loose and the feedback will be useful…
My initial interpretation of the photo has been done quite quickly as I painted it all in one go although some areas dried more quickly than I’d have liked. You might be able to see that I went back in over the shadows of the upright Pears to try and get a ‘lost edge’ effect – while I’m aware how important they are it’s something I’m not exactly sure how to achieve or what the rules are. I’ve spent lots of time staring at photos and my paintings trying to work out which edge should be ‘lost’ – would it be the light edge or the dark one??
In this instance I think it might be the dark edges losing themselves in the background, so I did try and achieve that. Whether I was successful or not I do think I’ve at least made some progress on my understanding :-).