I've started experimenting with painting over photos of nature and culture, keeping in the natural parts of the photo which appeal to me and painting over the built and man made aspects of it. This first attempt is small scale, A4, I'm not sure if it works and I found working on such a small painting difficult. So I've printed out a larger version to work on.
The building in the small painting is still visible which does something different than the solid paint in the larger painting. I think the building remains important when you can still see it to some degree, when only some of the edges of the building are apparent the building is less important although still there. I think this leads to questions about why I have removed the building, the centre of the photo and why I kept the trees.
Although I was happier with the blanking out of the building in the larger painting, I didn't like the composition. Tiling the image had added large bands of white at the top and bottom, and a smaller band of white on the vertical edges. I tried cropping the painting to balance it out. I think I've probably taken too much off!
