From Photo Reference to Figure Painting: “The Last Summer,” Step by Step

Diana Tremaine shares how she created the large-scale figure painting “The Last Summer,” including how she knows when a painting is finished.

From Photo Reference to Figure Painting: “The Last Summer,” Step by Step

By Diana Tremaine
dianatremaine.com

On View: New Paintings by Lynette Cook and Diana Tremaine
Andra Norris Gallery, Burlingame, California
Through May 3, 2024

1. I start all my figurative paintings with dozens of reference photos taken by me. I direct my models to move and position themselves according to what I want the image to be about. From those photos, I choose/extrapolate whatever poses work best for both the composition and the message and put those together.

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2. Knowing this painting would be set in water, I chose to start with a semi-transparent blue ground on top of Gamblin oil painting ground. I wanted the water extremely loose so I broke it apart intuitively with solvent, both with brush strokes and splatters.

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3. I always draw the figures with raw sienna, not getting bogged down with too much detail, and then start with the color.

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4. As I continue to add color, I pay attention to how the new marks and developing forms interact with the spontaneous marks of the blue ground below. In some cases, I choose to preserve the initial marks and drips. In other cases, the underlying marks became discordant and have to go.

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5. Critical to the success and feel of this image was the intersection of the flesh and water. I worked extremely quickly here, not overthinking my mark-making or the specificity of lights and shadows. With wet paint on both the flesh and surrounding water, I pulled dry brush strokes through and across all, breaking and distorting edges and contours, creating the illusion of water.

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6. Returning to the water, I wanted to maintain an exciting, unpredictable surface that would be evocative of those very same qualities in water. I used large house painting brushes, lots of solvent, and many wipe-throughs with rags.

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7. I always come back over edges no matter what I am painting, making sure I like the way the positive and negative shapes intersect and greet one another.

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8. I strive for interesting surface tension in all of my paintings so some passages of paint are left thin and washy and others are built up to be thick and opaque.

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9. Knowing when a painting is finished is purely intuitive for me. It occurs when I hit the right combination of detail versus broad loose mark-making that opens the story up and leaves room for the viewer to bring their own experience to the image.

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