You’ve come back from a holiday with a camera (phone!) full of photos and you’re eager to start using them as reference for new paintings. You pick one of your favourites but all of a sudden, you’re overwhelmed by everything that’s there. What do you do?? Sometimes simplifying a scene can seem impossible! 

But it IS possible and we’re going to look at a few ways you can start the process of simplifying what you see.

Let’s have a look at how I went about simplifying a scene I snapped while in Tuscany. 

Here’s the reference photo.

It doesn’t look like much does it?! So why did I take the photo? What I remember when I took it was that I loved the narrow alley. I liked the shape of the sky as it came down between the buildings and how that shape was echoed in the shape of light on the side of one of those buildings on the right. 

So the first thing to think about is WHY you took the photo in the first place. What was the main reason you wanted to capture it? Being clear on the answer to this question is your starting point to simplifying a scene.

In my case, I wasn’t interested in the building on the left or the car. And I didn’t need to include all of the building on the right. So, I zoomed in. You can see how I did this in my thumbnail.

Creating a thumbnail is the next step to simplifying your image. 

This is where you think about simplifying your values, that is, corralling the multitude of value nuances into three main value areas – what’s going to be dark, what’s going to be your middle value, and what’s going to be light. SQUINTING will really help with this!!! 

You can see in my thumbnail that the dominant value is middle and that there’s only a small amount of dark with some areas of light (sky and ground). 

Because thumbnails are small, there’s no room for detail. This is part of the simplification process – ignore all the details and instead, focus on finding and creating the BIG shapes. 

This is also the time to decide what you want to leave in (what enhances your why and the painting as a whole) and what you can leave out (cos you really don’t need to include everything!).

Once I’ve created a thumbnail that works for me, I recreate those shapes of value on my pastel paper, usually with three colours, each in a value that represents a dark, a middle, and a light. 

Another way to simplify is choosing to use a limited palette. The more colours you have to manage, the more the scene can begin to feel overwhelming again. The fewer colours you use, the more harmonised your painting will be, AND in this way, you avoid the overwhelm of many colours. Less colours also means it’s easier to stick with your original value plan! 

As I build the layers in a painting, I can decide what details I want to include. In this case, I didn’t want to fill up the painting and take away from the main idea, namely those light shapes made by the sky and the light on the building and the ground. But I do want to create the feel of a small Tuscan village with shuttered windows and flowers on the step. So I add in these details judiciously.

And that’s it! Time to stop.

Here are the 12 Unison Colour pastels I used (from my set) – lined up in their value range.

And here are the reference photo and the painting together. You can see all that I’ve left out and what I focused on.

By not including everything, by focusing on the big shapes, you can simplify, and by doing so, create a stronger painting. You can see too how a simplified colour palette helps underline a simplified idea.

Here are five steps to simplifying a scene:

1. Know what attracted you to painting the scene. What’s your WHY? Decide if you need to zoom in to say what you want to say. 
2. Look for the BIG shapes
3. Simplify your value choices. This is also part of seeing the big shapes as the values begin to coalesce.
4. Decide what to leave in and what you can leave out. This comes back to your why – what things or details will enhance your painting and what will detract
5. Choose to use a limited palette

Simplifying a scene is about making decisions, sometimes many decisions! It’s not always an easy process but knowing a few steps to do so will help you avoid overwhelm and create a painting that says what you want it to say!

Until next time,

~ Gail

PS. LATE ADDITION! A video on YouTube of the same paintings!