Contact me for price and availability if you like this one
Have been wanting to paint this scene for years. i always drive by it and the sun's not in the right spot or there's too much sea fog to see the water tower in the distance, something. well saturday morning it was perfect. so i set up and banged away at it for a couple hours. my new found habit of sketching is paying off with more accurate drawings, and in less time too.
Starting a new feature on the blog. if you have questions about anything in my posts, anything about methods, subject matter, or anything at all you'd like to ask, leave them as a comment and i'll respond to them in future posts.
here's some ive got already-
Q:about toning canvases with colored gesso all at once, or tone them indivually
A: i use about a dozen methods of underpainting from using thin washes of acrylic to wiping on and wiping off alizarin crimson and a little green, to the strictly cape cod technique. i like to wait till i see what i'm going to paint to decide what to pull out of my bag of tricks. if you do them all in advance i'd think you were pretty well stuck. but there's no right or wrong so try it several ways and decide which way you like working the best
Q: about best way to photograph paintings
A: i shoot my pics on my easel with two flood lights covered in tracing paper. one over my left shoulder and one over my right shoulder. the painting low on the easel. glare is when the light hits at a perfect 90 degree angle to the lens of the camera. all you have to do is change that angle and you wont have glare. then take it into a photo editing program and drop the light value just a bit, and up the contrast. fool with the color settings until the pic looks like the painting. i know its tempting but be sure to NOT make the pic look better than the painting. anyone seeing the original after seeing the "doctored" version would be a little upset and disappointed.
11 comments:
What is the best way to photograph my paintings? I have tried indoors with lights covered with tracing paper. I have tried outdoors in the shade. Both ways I get a glare or reflection off the paint and the colors don't appear like the painting.
Hello Mike,
I like your fresh and loose style a lot. I'm more a watercolour painter and recently, I began painting with oils, although I'm still not feeling very comfortable with them...
My question is: Which oil paints do you use (one brand, a mix of different brands, which brand?) and have you ever painted with water soluble oil paints, because I think that alkyd or water soluble oil paints should be very convenient when painting "en plein air" because of their fast drying abilities...Which opinion do you have?
Best regards from Munich,
Claudia
Hi Mike,
Great work, especially this piece.
chris- thanks man! did you see where i was dropping out of DPG? got tired of having to give them away. that was a lot of work for just a little money. i'm going to spend the time doing more high end stuff for my higher end galleries to make up the difference. if you see me in the poor house please dont mock me LOL
Mike,
I have enjoyed watching your paintings over the last year. I love how you are kicking up the color vibrancy lately. Your paintings are really "popping". THe traffic jam is a gem. It will be hard to part with that. Dean
Fantastic painting Mike.
Mike, let me add that, as someone who has seen your paintings in person, the photos are good but still do not do true justice to your work. The colors and vibrancy in the actual items are killer, and anyone who likes a photo of your work will absolutely love the real deal when they see it in person.
Steve
dean- appreciate that youve followed that long and put up with my ravings on this blog. we should be painting together in maysville soon. see you then
simon- thanks man! went to your blog and love your stuff.come again soon!
steve- youre too kind. the money for saying that is in the mail. no seriously i was telling somebody today that the monitor doesnt even come close to showing the beauty in a painting. it really only shows the subject matter, whether the edges are hard or soft, and a little of the main colors.
the reason the vibrancy doesnt show up in the photos on mine is that the small bits of pure color that appear in the original are too small to show up on a reduced photo shot at 3 meg resolution. when you see it in person you get all those shots of pure complimentary colors peeking out everywhere.
thanks for your kind words!
Hey Mike! I love this one! Beautifuly sundrenched and that jeep is so perfectly and simply rendered. :)
Sent you an email regarding color correction. See what you think.
everybody who asked questions-
i'll answer in my next post. thanks for asking
jeff- i'll answer the question on my next post. thanks for coming by. are you still paintin' em up?
did you see where i dropped out of DPG?
your work is awesome. i love how you captured the atmosphere of the hot weather on this street. great composition. !!!
Post a Comment