Too dark

It’s a rainy day today, very dark. Great for indoors activities, and yet – my lamp seems to shine in the wet paint, so I’m going to have to hoist up the dinner table lamps (glass) even more so I don’t knock them out when I move the easel around.

I have quite a few ideas for using my “intuitive backgrounds”. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I get really into the stage where I lash on paint and create some nice effects and then I’m afraid to paint a motif over the top for fear of ruining it. Perhaps I’m to be an abstract painter? Yesterday I had the notion though, to incorporate some horses. I need to learn to loosen up, not try to paint realistic, because it deadens my work. When I painted before, I mostly had a plan before I even started or I did a bit of background doodling to see if it began to look like something, and then I made a plan.

Anyway, today’s question is not about getting ideas, it’s about taking photos of your work. I wanted to take some good photos of each stage in the paintings to use on the computer. Textures to blend with photos. In fact I have the notion to also leave some canvasses (how many s’s?) as backgrounds and simply save them to use for photographing yarn or found objects on/against. (Like my tulips above, against a blue painting, I’ve got a variety of those)

Do you have any good tricks for me, when they’re too large to pop in a scanner? Do you simply wait until there is good light? I really was counting on painting all day again today (although the loom is calling), but then I’ll miss some “stages”.

Or is it simply another exercise in going with the flow of life and wait for the sun….

coverup
This is just a first layer cover-up of the previous owner’s “cactus in a window”. It distracted me too much to paint on it as it was.

6 thoughts on “Too dark

  1. Cloudy overcast days, not sun, for photos. But make sure your surface isn’t glossy as you will get glare.

    Usually though I do multiple part scans on an A3 scanner and then knit them together in Pshop or Gimp. I find this more efficient.

    1. This day is gloomy, foggy and lifeless however – I guess I’ll wait. You’re probably right, unless I have real studio lights for photos it’s going to be wrong – of course, just for textures from unfinished paintings it doesn’t matter that much.

      No access to fancy scanners unfortunately.

  2. Ligemeget hvad er det da også upraktisk med våd maling i scanneren. Du må bare tage en masse billeder med forskellige indstillinger – og så lægge et hvidt papir i nærheden, så hvidbalancen har noget at indstilles efter senere.

  3. I really like your idea of saving some for photo backgrounds. And I love the colors in your photo. 🙂 Wish I had photo advice, but I struggle with finding good lighting too.

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