From Drone to Canvas: From Lens to Line
What happens when a photograph becomes a painting?
For my From Lens to Line exhibition, I wanted to explore the connection between the different ways I see the world — through photography, illustration and painting. This video takes you behind the scenes of one part of that journey, starting high above the landscape with my drone footage and ending with paint on canvas.
The drone gives me a completely different perspective. Looking from the Drone point of view enables me to see landscapes in ways that aren't always possible from ground level. Shapes, colours, textures, roads, coastlines and buildings begin to form patterns that can become the starting point for a painting.
But the photograph or drone image is only the beginning.
Once I bring that visual reference back into the studio, the process changes. I’m no longer simply trying to reproduce what the camera captured. I’m looking at the composition, the atmosphere, the colours and, most importantly, how I want the finished painting to feel.
Using my palette knife and bold application of paint, I start translating the photographic reference into something more expressive. The straight lines and precise details of the camera give way to texture, movement and the physical marks of the artist.
That is what From Lens to Line is really about.
It isn't simply an exhibition of photographs and paintings. It is about the journey between them — how one image can inspire another, and how the way we see something can change when we move from lens to paintbrush.
The drone footage gives us the view from above. The camera freezes a moment. The painting takes that moment and allows me to interpret it in my own way.
For me, photography and painting aren't competing disciplines. They are part of the same creative journey.
From Lens to Line — from the captured image to the painted line, shape, colour and texture.
This is another glimpse behind the artwork featured in my exhibition at East Kilbride Arts Centre.
Arttoon — Tell a Story with an Image.
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