Saturday, February 13, 2010

NEXT PAINTING PROJECT


I saw these wonderful red peppers in the market today and knew I had to paint them. They will be my next watercolor project. I will lay the first washes down on Sunday and post it to show you my progress.

TIP: about the photos I am using for my paintings: I have discovered that my studio on a cloudy day is perfect for shooting reference shots for my paintings. In the afternoon the western light thru the clouds makes for good side lighting of a soft quality much like shooting with a big softbox lighting setup. I simply use watercolor paper as my background and foamcore as the shooting surface. It is a little reflective and helps fill in the shadows. I also overexpose the image one stop from the meter (+1) to compensate for all the white in the photo. Since these are meant for my reference and will not be printed bigger than 8x10 I shoot at 400 or 800 asa and can hand hold the camera. This is a quick and dirty way to get some good reference photos.

Keep Makin' Art
Carl

2 comments:

Von said...

Good one I do more or less the same and it workd for me.
Love the peppers, look forward to seeing progress!

Carl said...

Thanks Von. Heading to the studio now to work on it.

CS