Source Materials

Have you ever come across a scene or frame that you just felt compelled to paint? Stuart Loughridge has many sources of inspiration that lend themselves well to creating that painting on cardboard. A frame of an odd shape or size can be the perfect reason to cut a piece of cardboard to fill it with.

Maybe you have an old master work that you’d like to copy. Or perhaps as you are out plein air sketching a particular composition you created is just begging to be larger and more thought out. Cardboard is such a quick, inexpensive, and easy to come by material that you don’t have to feel like you need to spend too much time or effort on the cartoon, taking a lot of pressure off of yourself to create something perfect and instead just something you want to look at.

Stuart shows the cardboard he will be using for the demonstration in the class, a double corrugated piece that has another piece attached to it where he will hang his reference plein air sketch, or source material. That way it is easily accessed for decision making without being in the way or getting messy as he works. So keep your eyes out for things around you that may give you the itch to start painting on cardboard.