These two photographs of the same model were used as a reference for my painting The Witching Hour

The finished painting - The Witching Hour by Neil Geddes-Ward 1998

In most of my paintings and drawings I use photographs of models to help me paint or flesh out the pictures. This saves the model a lot of time having to sit for many painting/ sketching sessions like in times gone by.

Usually I would draw out ideas on paper as just small rough sketches or thumbnails. These would develop over time into proper more elaborate drawings, perhaps even coloured in. Once I was happy with the idea, then the models would be engaged to provide the poses I need and also certain looks that models possess. So for instance, ‘The Witching Hour’ featured on this site, had a model called Gabriella, who had previously posed for me in the sea scape painting ‘Gallows Wake’.

I photographed her about 30 shots in total and from that selected the two pictures you see here. So I combined the two poses a little to produce the final one you see in ‘The Witching Hour’. I liked the angle of her head in the picture on the left and liked the pose of the arms etc in the picture on the right. During the photo shoot many ideas are explored and photographed other than the initial idea, incase something can be made from some of those ideas too.

These two photographs of the same model (pictured below) were used as a reference for my painting The Witching Hour, which was shown being painted in a Channel 4 documentary called ‘In Your Dreams’. The Witching Hour by Neil Geddes-Ward 1998 documentary called ‘In Your Dreams’.