Let Nature Inspire You, and Your Camera Guide You to Create

Recently at the market I was visited by a woman who is an aspiring artist. She is one of my collectors and we've had some really fun conversations over the past year every time we see each other. She insists she only wants to paint for fun, but is finding it challenging to decide what to paint. She absolutely loves clouds, so I suggested she do a little cloud gazing with her camera to take the pressure off. A Digital SLR equipped with a Polarizer filter can really make clouds pop!

Daina, filming the movie trailer for The Painted Road Project, Mexico 2013

My first love is photography. Some of you might know this about me- when I was a kid I used to spend hours and hours in my dad's darkroom, watching him develop photos he took of my family and of nature, magically making them appear under the glow of the red light. I was fascinated! And I still am, even in this digital age of DSLRs and Photoshop.

I wish I were the kind of artist who could stream what's in their mind out their hand onto canvas, but I'm not, despite all the drawing classes and thousands of hours of practice. Rather my mind works like a camera's viewfinder, looking out at the world and taking mental snapshots of its beauty. When I close my eyes I can still see it and feel it, but there is a fuzzy blockage that happens when I try to relay that image to canvas, and the result is a muddy disaster. It can be very frustrating, but I've worked around it by using photography as a reference tool to bypass that fuzziness and help relay what that image made me feel. So in many ways sometimes I feel like I am not a real artist, or I am cheating in some way, but then if I don't express myself I fall into a rut and get cranky. So, I've decided I am a Resourceful Artist!  I've found a way to express what I feel the best way I know how.

New commission, beginning stages- the sketch.

In progress...

Finished!

Through my experiences teaching kids, and the people I've met while selling my art, I've realized so many creative people don't try to express themselves through art because they encounter the same obstacles as I have. Sometimes the easiest solution is as simple as a snapshot!

Original photo © Lauren Smith, provided for commissioned painting reference.

Happy creating!

xo DS

Original artwork © Daina Scarola, Ocean Art Studio