Susan Kennedy Art

I am crazy about this photo and feel that it's a good example of how painting from photos can be helpful!  The main advantage of taking lots of reference photos, for you as an artist, is that so many unplanned but beautiful compositions jump out at you if you browse through them and crop. You limit what you will consider for a composition when you lift your camera to a scene: you've got compositional rules in your head, and you're looking at a favored focal point. But when you flip through - and crop - your photos later on, those ideas will have faded and the flat images themselves will present new and fresh ideas to you. This particular shot, taken by me, a tourist in London, was not well planned or composed. But not only an interesting crop, but even some water which spilled and spattered this particular print and faded and blended some colors made me look at it in a different way. The colors which faded and ran together made the scene have a very otherworld