In my recent landscape painting class at Woodmere Art Museum I did a painting of the parking lot and some trees. I was interested in how I might depict the shadows on the pavement. Not knowing how things would go, I snapped a photo of the scene. Later on I did a pen drawing of the photo, just for fun.
It’s not from exactly the same angle as the painting, but I will show them both to you and you’ll see the connection. First, the photo:
Now, the drawing:
And here is the painting, to refresh your memory.
Here they are together. The drawing is about 5″ x 8″ and the painting is 18″ x 24″. I think it is interesting how I could get so much mileage out of a parking lot scene. The moral of the story is, never overlook the ordinary as a source of inspiration, I guess!
Claudia McGill and Her Art World 
A wonderful glimpse to show one way a painting can develop
And to the theory of, sometimes it is fun to try the same scene in more than one medium and see what new insights or ideas you get from it.
It is interesting to see all of the images side by side. I think your ink drawing more closely follows the composition of the photo and then your painting interprets the scene much more loosely. That leads me to wonder whether the drawing stage helps your artistic eye select the elements you want to be the focus of the painting so that those become more emphatic in that composition.
In drawing I feel I can include more elements because of the way the pen captures the scene, it allows me to pack more into the picture, whereas paint, it just seems to me that the nature of the medium (the way I do things, that is) forces me to simplify because I use big strokes and blocks of color. It’s nice to do both, a scene can really provide a lot of interest even if I do it more than once.
I totally understand that. I too am much more detailed when drawing or even using watercolour but I am much broader and bolder in my mark-making and forms when using mixed media.
Definitely captured, Claudia. I think the crosshatching works really well for the shadows.
Thank you. I really enjoy making al lthe patterns that pen and ink do so well and crosshatching can be strangely meditative and calming. Never mind ending up with a picture to boot!
Just brilliant – you did get a lot of mileage out of that parking scene 🙂