There's More to Painting Than Just Painting

Gaillardia are annoying flowers to paint. They are even more annoying to photograph: They're red.

My blurred photograph yesterday didn't bother me as much as the inaccuracy of the colors in the painting. Handshake can be controlled by changing to the macro setting, bracing your elbows against your body and/or leaning against the nearest wall--also by not being in such a hurry to point and shoot. But color accuracy on reds up close and personal with a digital is something else; I worked hard in Jasc and Pro 8 getting Gaillardia as close as possible to how it looks hanging on the wall.* Maybe I have to get my old stuff out of storage?

I used to photograph art for students' portfolios years ago. I had a choice of which film color would best suit their work. For warm colored Art, I used mostly Kodachrome film in my 35mm camera, with a normal lens on a tripod with the doohickey thing that you screwed into the camera that allowed you to squeeze the shutter release slowly,(no pouncing, no blurring). Kodachrome film complimented the reds, the warm colors. Ektachrome film suited the blues,cool colors. Parallax lines were taken care of by slightly tilting the camera down five to ten degrees on the tripod. Then there was the issue of lighting--even, indirect, no flashes. I have all my equipment still-- but whose got the time for all that when just journaling what you're up to in the art studio? Maybe I do?

In the studio, I worked on the pentatych, panel two.




Then I put the two together to see how they related to one another. I was looking for possible common threads--connectives. (Sorry the two aren't on line. That photographic precision wasn't necessary for my purpose. If you look closely at the panels, you can see where I started to bring them together. This coordination will go on through the painting of all the panels as they are added.



*Gaillardia's colors are finally accurate in this photograph. Being that the picture is done on a three quarter inch canvas,it needed a frame. What you see is what I chose. The crosshatch bronze finish on the 1" wood frame picks up the colors in the picture; the oatmeal linen liner gives it space to breath.