Studio Time

This session involved using Sennelier’s Naples yellow, titanium white and Modigliani ochre to build up the lights. I refined that with Sennelier’s burnt sienna and sap green… used it to smooth out the rough edges and so on. I managed to tone down some of the orange and to implement a bit of Modigliani’s idea of what a fleshtone should be.

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An update on the photo issue: I don’t really mean to harp on it, whine, complain or whatever. I am still building this studio… I’d like to set up a permanent photo system that lets me simply shoot this sort of thing without moving half of the furniture in the room, playing acrobat, re-shooting 20 times with different lighting or spending an hour with graded masks in a photo editor; something that will let me simply “shoot and go” so to speak. Much of this will resolve when the painting’s dry. As I’ve said otherwheres… It’s not usually an issue. I’d like to have things optimized, regardless. I want the best prints possible.

I built a sort of make-shift soft box this morning. (Basically hung a sheet of plastic a few feet from fluorescent fixture that I use to light the easel.) It helped a bit. 🙂 This probably means I’m going to have to make a trip to the local home improvement store eventually.

After reading half of the stuff about photographing artwork on the internet; most of the stuff that deals with this sort of thing suggests doing exactly what I’m doing. 🙂 It’s not working. The most commonly suggested upgrades to the process are polarizing filters, softboxes and umbrellas. The polarizing film will happen, regardless. I don’t really have the room for umbrellas. I can build a permanent softbox on the ceiling and a portable one for the floor… or maybe built into the easel. That would make life considerably easier. Eventually, I’d like to hang a few fixtures from the ceiling as well. 🙂 Maybe take a hacksaw to my old lights?