It’s been 11 years?
By Tracey Maras
In a previous blog I shared the 6-year process of creating “Morning Romp.” Little did I know that I would soon surpass that 6-year mark by an additional 5 years!
I have a lot of reference photos. I mean a lot of photos! There are well over 75,000 photos on my hard drive. Many of the photos have been collected from vacations, gardens, wildlife sanctuaries, zoos, historical locales, and plein air opportunities. But the majority are just from everyday observations. With a camera nearly always handy, I might find inspiration during a morning walk, on a drive through city streets, or even discovering a koi pond while shopping for plants at a landscaping business.
And yes, I do refer back to this ever-growing collection of reference photos.
One particular photo that I kept revisiting was from a trip to Texas in 2011. While walking along a beach at a wild bird sanctuary, I took several photos of flocks of birds taking flight. Unfortunately, it was very sunny, and the birds were backlit. The sky in the photo was blown out white and the white birds were silhouetted black. And the birds were too far away, preventing any details from being captured, other than a mass of birds.
But there was definitely something compelling about the scene that kept drawing me back. Every few years I would find myself thinking I wanted to do something with this scene. But what? And how?
As with most things in life, patience is key.
One day it dawned on me. Using a photo editing program, I pulled up the 11-year-old photo. I cropped in on several smaller groups of birds within the photo. I lightened the shadows so I could try to find some of the details that were originally lost by the camera. Now I had something I could work with!
I selected several individual birds and created a few thumbnail sketches to design a composition. I was on my way!
As I worked on the painting, I realized I wasn’t familiar with these birds since I really couldn’t identify them in the original photo. After some additional research, I discovered they are Terns. Immediately, the title popped into my head.
And it only took eleven years from capturing a flock of birds in flight to the completion of the painting “A Tern of Phrase”, 16x20”.
This blog article originally appeared on www.traceymaras.com. It has been republished here with permission.
