Seascape painting in process

I took a few pictures of a painting as it developed in the studio today, and I thought this might make an interesting blog post of a work in progress.

This is a pretty big piece (15 x 30 inches).

I started the painting by toning the canvas using transparent red oxide.  I like this color for toning because it is both a warm color and transparent.  Getting rid of the white canvas is really important to help get things going.

In this first image, I've blocked in all the shapes using a dark mixture of the red oxide and ultramarine blue.  I've also established the sky so that I can identify the lightest lights (and compare all other marks against these lights), and I've quickly wiped out some of the tone color to establish where I'm going to introduce a breaking wave.

I tend to work on the whole canvas at once, focusing on whatever is most 'off' at any point in time.  At this phase I have the darkest darks (rocks) and the lightest lights (the sky) established.  What is most off are the mid-values (the water), so I'll start to work that in ...

Next I need to work in the shadow values of the cast shadow on the whitewater foam.  These are some of the trickier values because these could be considered a white in shadow.  These need to be recognizable as part of the darks in the painting, but they need to be closest to the lights.  It's a fine balancing act to get it right.

 

Once I get to this point for the first time I start to get a sense of luminosity on in the painting (at least in one spot).  Here's a closeup where I got that important first important rush of capturing the 'light envelope' (that elusive quality gives a painting glow)...

It's rough still, but it's there.  The edges are still too hard, and lots of the toned canvas is still showing.  But at the intersection of the rocks, their cast shadows and the lighter water it is just starting to 'glow'.

Notice too how blue the whitewater is and looks.  Part of it is that I'm staying far away from white so that I have lighter values in reserve for later on.  It also looks very blue here because the red toned canvas is still so visible.  a cool color (blue) next to a warm (red) will look ever cooler. When the red eventually gets covered, the blue will look less intense.  This is called simultaneous contrast, and is one of the trickiest parts of painting.

Here's a black and white of that detail.  It is the value (darks and lights) that make a painting glow (NOT the colors as is so often mistakenly assumed).  The black and white is a nice way to analyze a painting to see if the values are working.

Also notice how the red toned canvas a the greens in the water (far right) virtually merge in the black and white image.  This is because they are the same value.  Try to squint at the color version so see this value relationship.  It's hard to see - right? 

Continuing on, I get the canvas covered so that I can see everything in relation to everything else.

I then work across the whole painting making adjustments so that each element reads the way I want in relation to all the other elements of the painting.  Because of simultaneous contrast, it can't really make these kinds of adjustments until the canvas is covered.  All decisions are about relationships, and you can't evaluate a relationship without all the pieces being available for comparison.

"Coastal Calligraphy" (in process), Oil, 15x30

This is where I left it for the day.  I'll work on it again tomorrow, but getting the whole canvas covered with a decent sense of the 'light envelope' is a good stopping point. 

... and finally, a B&W of the piece as it stands today to help see the value map of the painting.

Poplar Beach, Half Moon Bay

Here's another of my favorite locations of late for plein air painting.


Cliff-Defying
Pastel
12x16

Poplar Beach in Half Moon Bay offers dramatic views. Take the pathway South from the parking lot, and you come to this cyprus grove overhanging a cliff.



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Cleaning Up Photos of Paintings in Photoshop

Artists often struggle to get good professional looking photos of their work. It used to be very important when shooting slides to have pristine lighting conditions and to shoot bracketing shots at various exposures. But in this digital age I have found that with Adobe Photoshop the quality of the photo is much less important (within limits).

In my critic group I was explaining the steps I take to cleanup photos of my paintings. There was a fair amount of interest, so I thought I’d write it up for those that are curious. Following this process I can now reliably touch up a photo in just a few minutes.

First - it's a good idea to have your computer monitor calibrated. I use a product called 'color munki' from x-rite. Otherwise you might adjust a photo to look good on your monitor, but it will look wrong/incorrect elsewhere. The first time you calibrate your monitor you will probably find that the monitor needed to be tweaked quite a bit (which incidentally also points out that anyone viewing your work without a calibrated monitor is likely to see variability in the colors, so don’t get too worried about perfection if you are only cleaning up photos for use on the web).

I photograph artwork in my studio. I'm fortunate that I have good natural light, and I often rely on this. But I also have good artificial light with a mix of full-spectrum bulbs - and I find I can take photos at night with acceptable results. The photo must be in focus and evenly lit with no hot spots. But color temperature and dim lighting can be adjusted. The photo should also be nice and square in the viewfinder (it should look like a rectangle with 90 degree corners – not like a trapezoid).

Once I have the photo, these are the steps I take with Photoshop to clean it up:

• Crop - cut the photo down to just the artwork. Be sure to square up the horizon line at this point if it doesn't appear level. In photoshop you can correct the horizon by dragging the mouse outside the crop box to slightly rotate the image to get the horizon level if necessary. Another great trick is to shrink the crop box so that the bottom edge overlaps the horizon, then rotate so the bottom of the crop box aligns with the horizon, and then re-stretch the crop box. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of the alignment process.
• Levels - Under Image->Adjustments->Levels you will find a tool that shows a spectrograph of how much information you have across the full value range. You’ll almost always find that you have no information within the darkest darks or lightest lights. With this tool, you can slide the sliders to ‘cut out’ these unused area, and photoshop will re-stretch your existing values across the full value range. This makes a huge difference.
• Color Balance (Image->Adjustments->Color Balance) - this lets you separately adjust the highlights, midtones and shadows. I find that if I adjust the highlights very slightly towards yellow and the shadows very slightly towards blue this usually brings the photo closer to the original artwork.
• Exposure (Image->Adjustments->Exposure) - sometimes I take the exposure down just a touch if after these previous steps the photo seems too bright or over saturated.

If you’re unfamiliar with the tools I’ve mentioned, use Photoshop help to get some additional instructions on using any of these tools. Good luck.