When I started drawing and painting I always strove for hyper realism and people would often comment that they thought my paintings were actually photos. But as time has gone on I've moved further away from that and would describe myself as more of an impressionist. When I paint now I often completely forget the subject and just try to paint each colour in it's correct place. With this method you should end up with an easily recognisable painting of your subject without having given any thought to what it is you're actually trying to paint.
Blue Anchor Beach6 x 8 inch
Al Fresco Dining, Minehead8 x 10 inch
Overlooking Minehead from North Hill
6 x 8 inch
Overlooking Minehead from North Hill6 x 8 inch
The painting above of Minehead was a good example. It's a really complicated subject and to start with I was trying to paint houses rather than colours. It was incredibly frustrating and the painting was terrible. Anyway, I was just about to chuck it in the bin when I started to forget the houses and just paint colour notes. As soon as I could get myself in that frame of mind everything started to look better and become much more 'real'. Kevin Macpherson is a good advocate of this painting method and his books 'Fill your oil paintings with light and color' and 'landscape painting inside & out' describe it in some detail.
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