From photo to painting

The Library Arts Committee in Deep River is hosting a show called Transitions, and I was... stuck. What does “transitions” even mean?

So I went to the internet and asked one of the many IT tools people are turning to these days. It churned its gears and came up with a whole variety of suggestions. One resonated with me: paint an upcoming storm. BINGO.

A storm is not just weather; it’s a moment between what was and what will be. It could be a perfect subject for a painting about transitions and I had taken just the photo when I was on Tobacco Caye in Belize. Here is my process from photo to painting.

I took this photo of a storm coming in when I was in Belize. I knew this was one of those moments that wants to become a painting eventually. Eventually came in the form of TRANSITIONS.

There are many photo-editing apps. I use BeCasso, (get it BeCasso… Picasso). It lets you pick paint styles—watercolour, pastel, oil, pencil—apply effects like “Autumn” or “Romantic,” and mimic artists like Van Gogh or Monet. You can make images expressive, comic or retro, change colour saturation and brightness, and preview them on different papers—cold or hot-press watercolour, note paper, parchment, mushroom paper, even cardboard. Its SO much fun to play with.

I manipulated the photo with BeCasso. This is one of the oil painting choices with some colour saturation thrown in for good measure.

When I was on Glover’s Reef I had done a painting of just the colours of the Caribbean. I referred to it when choosing the watercolours I would be using in my final painting. (I have a few more colours in my studio but I didn’t use too many more than I had brought with me.)

My sketch of the colours of the Caribbean.

For the Transitions painting I used mostly Rockwell (Canada) paints — Royal Purple, God’s Back, Wild Iris, Peachblow, Lover’s Tears (gotta love the names of the Rockwell paints!). Mission (Korea) Cobalt Green and Cobalt Turquoise. These paints are hard to find. I had purchased them in Corbeil but they aren’t available anymore. Shimmery Beam paints (Manitoulin Island) with names like Shell, Lake Trout, Salamander; and Daniel Smith (USA) Buff Titanium, Phthalo Blue and Raw Sienna. (This info is really for my artist friends out there, lol.)

The first painting I did. It is 12×16”. I used some silver foil in the water.

The final 12×16” watercolour painting. I decided to change it to a portrait configuration and added some sand in the foreground so it looks like you are looking from the beach to toward the upcoming storm. Silver foil in the water and gold foil in the sand.

The upcoming show begins on March 2, 2026 in the Deep River Library. I will be very excited to see how other artists interpret the word Transitions.