How could we use digital photography to help us develop our drawing and painting beyond the obvious 'let's copy a photo'?

Here is an idea (Level is for someone with basic drawing and painting skills, fairly confident using a camera) for creating an abstract painting using a photograph as a starting point:

Taking your photos

1. Choosing your subject: you can choose any subject you want; if you are stuck try using a flowering plant, and take your inspiration from the close up flower paintings of the American artist Georgia O'Keefe. 

2. Using the telephoto end of the zoom on your camera, get really close to your subject to create an abstract image.
   

Be really aware of everything you see in the viewfinder, right up to the edges and move closer or zoom more if there is too much.The key is to be aware of what you are actually seeing in the viewfinder, not what you think you are seeing. Big difference!

1. Notice shapes, colours and tones (lights and darks). Experiment with creating an unusual and interesting composition of shapes, tones and colour in your viewfinder.

2. Now you are close to your subject, explore it from different viewpoints - imagine you are an ant or a worm and get really low, or photograph from above if you have not done so already. How could you abstract further so maybe someone has to guess what it is a photograph of?

3. Take lots of photos really getting to know your subject, and exploring different ways of placing lights, darks, shapes and colours in your viewfinder.

Creatively editing your photos in Photoshop

1. Using one of the Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS programs, experiment with basic tools such as  cropping, levels (tonal balance), saturation, changing individual colours, applying filters, using the paint bucket. Save your experiments as you go along.

2. If you are Photoshop savvy, try exploring layering two or more images, the eraser and masking, using blend options as well as basic tools.

3. You will now have a selection of radically different images to use as starting points for experimental drawing, collage and mixed media paint studies. Keep your options open at this stage, and just do studies in an open ended way to see where this leads you.