Oil Techniques

Translation as painting techniques for the best statement

by Daniel Edmondson 

  You hear me or read me using the term “translation” and this is a relatively new in the scope of painting techniques for many artists. You look at a setup or model which is exists in the visual world, then translate what you see into paint.  Much like you might do if you translated French into English…during this translation process the words you choose will be colored by the intention of the phrase. What is your intention? When I use the word translation, I mean I want you to take the painting to a little bit different, higher place than maybe what just copying could do.  Once in a while copying the subject is the highest place that the painting could get to although, I would say in most times, that is not the case. 

What I want you to do is to look at the still life or figure, and look at how the light is arranged, how the color is arranged, how you want the eye path to go, what the movement looks like from light and value changes and decide what would be the absolute best painting possible.  You get to pick and choose what flowers go where, or how you want the light to travel across the model until you get exactly the effect that you want. Examples:  – where do you want the painting to have the brightest color, where do you want the brightest light and what is going to be the best arrangement of the elements of color, value, edges, paint application – thick and thin, to yield the absolute best painting. 

Not only are you going to look at the set up, or the model, I recommend you look at references and see how other people have done it and borrow any good ideas.  You then decide what would work well for this painting and that would work better than what I am seeing in my photographs and better than what I am seeing in reality. 

So take the best of reality, take the best of photographs that you have, the best from your computer screen, the best of reference pictures of other paintings (these can even be paintings you have done) of similar types of things and you combine them to create the absolute best painting possible. For more information Oil Painting DVD