In all my demos and workshops I often say painting from photos is the reason that the end result of so many artist paintings end up so mediocre. Well, that is the polite version. It usually comes out like this, "Photos are the reason you paint so bad." :) I'll try to outline my reasoning throughout this article. Composition First and foremost, most photos the average person takes are un-composed and shot on auto. Some make great snapshots but nothing really great to paint from. [...]

I recently finished my portrait of Greg Moore, the Mayor of Port Coquitlam, and had the opportunity to present it to him at the start of the first council meeting of 2015. The portrait came about when I met the Mayor during an exhibition I had with two other local artist in Leigh Square, Denise Maxwell and Catherine Dumaine, back in early 2014. While walking through Leigh Square with Greg that day we discussed the idea of his portrait and we made arrangements for a [...]