Painting Upside Down

Exercising...I've blogged on this before and probably will again in the future, but here is an exercise that challenged everything my left brain brought to the easel: Painting Upside Down!

No, no, I wasn't personally upside down; only my reference photo and my painting were. Here's how it works (and, believe me, it is very baffling at first): turn the photo of what you wish to paint upside down and paint the canvas in the same manner, upside down. It sounds simple enough, but the brain does not want to let go of control and order! The first instinct is to paint right-side-up what you are viewing upside down, which is incredibly difficult and disconcerting. It's like your mind is wanting to make sense of what is not making any sense at all.

step 1: reference (photo taken by Pam Padgett)

step 2: invert reference photo

The point of this exercise is to be released from the idea of the Thing (the doorway, the car, the structure) and paint simple shapes and values, shape relationships with the shapes next to them. This is an exercise done quickly, about 45 minutes. No masterpieces here. No fussiness. No stress. (that explains why I left the detailed bicycle out!) 

step 3: paint the shapes as they appear upside down (ie. put in the ground at the top of the canvas and the top of the doorway at the bottom)

step 4: when finished, flip painting right-side-up and compare with right-side-up reference photo

One thing that I immediately noticed when I turned my painting right-side-up was that the stucco wall actually looked like stucco! Because I wasn't carefully drawing the curve of the doorway I was able to capture a painterly impression of the warm and lumpy exterior. 

I hope this wasn't too confounding. Did it make sense to you?

​I like sharing the details of becoming a better painter in this blog because it both reinforces for me what I'm learning and also sheds light for you, dear readers, on how much goes into becoming a good artist.  It also gives me opportunity to consult the thesaurus so I'm not repeating the same word ("confusing") over and over and, instead, get to choose the much more delightful "baffling", "disconcerting", and "confounding."  

​Thank you for letting me share my ramblings!!