Preparatory sketches, tonal, compositional or whatever.

I understand your point of view but, as another amateur that sells a few paintings here and there, I think it is always worth trying to improve or add to your capability. That doesn't mean that one should invariably do what other (better?) painters do but giving it a try might change how you do things for the better. I do preparatory sketches or studies for less than half the paintings I do, not counting plein air studies that are used (often augmented by photographs) in the studio. Doing this has made me appreciate the importance of tone and realise that whereas colour can be varied often without detriment, correct tone is vital. I have made a habit of squinting at the subject, whatever I am doing and wherever I am working, in order to better appreciate the tonal range and distribution...I think it helps me to better results and that applies to strict representational and looser more interpretive work. In my late sixties I constantly try new techniques and methods, very often to no lasting benefit but I learn from them all. After all, I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said 'learn from the mistakes of others, you won't live long enough to make them all yourself'. I think that is good advice and applies equally to learning from the work of others.

After seeing your post Derek I've just grabbed my copy of 'The Artist' and had a quick scan over Haidee's article. Some of it makes sense to me, but the amount of preparation work that she goes through initially is probably too much for most amateur artist's. However, she does have some valid and interesting points, tonal value being an important aspect of all paintings, without it paintings will appear flat. She also spends much time on 'counterchange' making her small twenty minute 5-colour sketches, and I consider them to be important. Many of us go through this process automatically anyway, in our heads, as we are painting, but no one can criticise her work obviously, so her methods certainly work for her. I do use a tonal/colour scale and I find that it helps me achieve a more coordinated range of palette which I feel is important to me. I'm probably talking about oil paints here as I like to mix my tonal range prior to starting a work, rather than going along and adding as and when, that seems to work for me. As for thumbnail sketches, I wouldn't do thirteen as Haidee has, but I always like to get a large marker pad and have a good scribble using whatever is at hand to draw with, even old oil paint left over on my palette (disposable type) makes for a good rough sketch. As we all know, it's the end result that matters to us as artist's, there can never be a right and wrong way, it's just a personal preference, I follow some of Haidee's techniques but not all. I'm never quite sure what is meant by the much used term 'professional artist'.? Is it someone who makes a living out of painting, irrespective of qualifications, or is it a person who has been professionally trained with qualifications but may or may not paint for a living?, both I expect.

My landscape scenes of villages etc are usually done from photos. I visit the village and take quite a few from different angles and when back home I play around with them on the computer cropping them where I think it might help until I arrive at a suitable composition. It may be that I will play around with foliage, tree placement etc but I do have to be careful as they must reasonably remain true to the location given the market I sell to. I rarely resort to thumbnails these days except when I am trying out something completely new and 'invented' although even then, like Sylvia, most work goes on in my head.

I have found that although, like most people I will draw out on the watercolour paper extracting from my photograph as I go, this only applies when I have taken a great deal of trouble with the original photograph itself. This is to make sure that the balance of tones as well as the right distribution of shapes is there. I am getting a little frail to sit for long in the open air as I used to do and the camera has to stand in for the sketching I used to faithfully do. I suppose I take all this trouble because I am still under the influence of the time when taking photos was an expensive business and everything had to be taken to the chemist to be processed. I still can't get used to how easy and cheap it is to take many hastily composed pictures of the candid variety with modern cameras. I do find that some of my better paintings result when working from a less than satisfactory photographs and I have to work out the composition and tonal values in sketch form before I can embark on the finished painting.

I tend to use photographs but, as I've said before in the forum, once I've got the composition pencilled in I tend to discard the photo. When I keep it in front of me I find I'm too influenced by it and inclined to want to replicate colours etc rather than painting my interpretation of the scene. Exactly the same applies when I paint en plein air - unlike other artists I find en plein air painting to be restictive but we are all different.