Photographing your set up

If you have to take down your set-up due to this

or that reason, photograph it from exactly the

same position from which you are painting it.

AND photograph it from above as well. How things

look when only viewed from the front can be

deceiving.

This is the set-up of one of my students. It is

quite the interesting challenge to do a painting

when everything in it is in the same color family.

Well except for the orange marble!

More on Tube Tops

This is not my original idea, but it sure is a great

one. I got it from an art magazine years ago and

only wish I could acknowledge the clever artist

who shared it.

These are called 'eye hooks'. They are a great

solution for caps that have disappeared. But better

still, they are a great solution for the way the necks

of paint tubes get all loaded with paint and it is

impossible to screw on the caps because the screw

threads are full of dried paint.

You will notice that there are different sized screws.

Different brands of paint have different sized holes.

So experiment by buying several sizes. Even if the

size you have doesn't fill the hole completely, it will

keep a channel open for you to get the paint out

easily.

I have found that I almost never bought a size big

enough when I started doing this years ago.

The artist who wrote about this did this with all

his paint tubes and then hung them from something

he made so he could easily find his paints. I never

did that. Just doing this was a great help.

Paint tube tops

After an artist has been using tube paints for a while,

the caps can become more difficult to get off. This is

true for all paint mediums that come in tubes, even

watercolor. The two tried and true methods of getting

off stuck caps are plyers and then using a lit match

to soften the hardened paint around the edges of the

cap.

There is still another way to handle this, but that is a

post for another day!

Bottle tops

When one is doing a still life and there are various

things in it, most of us work to get the shapes and

proportions right. But that is not where it should

end.

After getting all that down in the best way you can,

take care to focus in on the details and really confront

what is there. I have seen many students just sort of

toss on a suggestion a bottle top.

So really confront the contours of it - the perspective

of the cylindrical opening and what part of the back

ring comes around into the curves in the front.

And if the bottle top is below your eye level, as in

this photograph, really get the curves right so it looks

three-dimensional!

Make a personal color chart

I have so many tubes of oil paint that I finally decided to make the chart you see here.

I got out all my tubes of paint (of course now I have even more!) and laid them out in color groups. I then arranged them in the color order I wanted.

Next I counted them and decided on the size canvas I needed to fit them all in.

This is an 18 x 24 inch canvas and the sections are 2 x 2.

Then I used a small oval shaped painting knife to apply the paint.

There is first the mass tone (the paint straight out of the tube) followed by a middle tone and then a very pale tone of the color. I used Titanium white.

If you have way too many colors to really know what they look like,

do this for reference.

There are about 6 difference brands here, but mostly Winsor and Newton.

I have a key in the lower right hand corner, so do allow for that.

Browns and greys are on a separate canvas.

Painting in one color

A while ago I decided to set myself a

painting challenge. Paint a set up that

had objects and background of all one

color.

This was the result of that endeavor.

I found that it was more important than

ever to have the tones or values correct.

And then I just couldn't resist little touches

of other colors in adding the marbles.

What do you think?

What to do if you can't leave a set-up up!

#1 is a front shot of the set-up.

#2 is a shot of the set-up with where the light is.

#3 is an overhead shot of the set-up.

If you can't leave a set-up in place, take these

photos. I do this for my students because they

have to take down their arrangements in between

lessons.

TIPS: Do NOT use a flash. You want to get the

lighting correct in terms of how the set-up

is actually lit.

Put pieces of tape on the floor for each item

(the light, easel and table). You may have to

move them around in between painting sessions.

This way you can mark the positions for easy

re-locating of their original positions. If you need

to, write on the tape which pieces of tape are

for what item!

Do shoot a photo from above so you can see the

distances that things are from each other. It is

difficult to tell when only having made a front

photo shot. When setting up the arrangement

again, lay that photo on the table and make your

things match what you see in the photo!

Remember that these are reference photos, and

are never the same as looking at the real things

with its actual lighting and color. So don't paint

from the photos you took of such a set-up. Paint

from life!

And last of all, know that as carefully as you do this,

the painting gremlins will conspire to have something

not quite as it was, no matter what you do!