The beginnings of a drawing

I am a member of the Colored Pencil Artists and Lovers on Facebook and they recently started talking about how to take reference photographs, so I thought I would show you the beginnings of something.

I am starting a new vending machine piece that will be 18" x 24" and have 3 machines, each with a different color fruit. My mom actually told me I should do it and I thought she was right! I only have one bubble gum machine, so I photographed the vending machines separately and will combine them on the board. Just like my other image I want very bright light with just a hint of a shadow and an all white background. I may make it look like it is on a white shelf like Wayne Thiebauld did with his bubble gum machines. As soon as my Mom suggested doing 3 I thought of his painting!

Here is one of the 3 reference photos. There IS side light, but it is subtle. All the colors are very bright. My printer always prints darker than my screen, so I will compensate by setting it lighter in photoshop and upping the color saturation when I print. 

To photograph this type of lighting I have one foam board on the bottom, and one of those tri-fold foam boards kids use for projects in the back (you can spray paint them different colors) turned a little on the lit side to let light in. I have it all set up in my garage with the set up turned to the side, so the light comes in at an angle. The rest of the garage is dark, but gives off plenty of reflected light. You can do the same setup in front of slider doors inside. Its best (I think) to do it on an overcast day or from North light, but you can't ever count on that. If it is terribly bright you can move further into the garage. 

This is just one of the ways I might light/photograph a set up. It is great for high key situations. 

Some other lighting tips can be found here:

 http://www.nicolecaulfieldfineart.blogspot.com/search/label/photography

http://www.nicolecaulfieldfineart.blogspot.com/2011/02/2-light-sources-versus-1-light-source.html

2 Light Sources versus 1 Light Source

This is where I am at after 2 days of work. The plan is  to have just the face and collar area in focus and have everything else a bit out of focus, especially the window and masks on the wall.

I am really happy with the actual figure in this one. I decided to photograph him with the natural light of his home instead of dramatic lighting.  I stood him close to one window with another window across the room. This allowed some strong blue light to hit his face and hair on the right from the close window and filtered, fainter warm light to hit his face from the windows across the room. I like how this lighter airier lighting looks with the young adult, softening him. 

Just to show you the difference lighting can make, below is a portrait I did with my daughter as the model. I darkened the room and used one strong light on her right side. The dark reddish light on the left side is just the reflected light of the one light source bouncing off the other side of the room. It makes for a spooky dramatic effect. Dutch masters like Rembrandt and Vermeer were amazing at using this effect, although maybe they used this lighting because it mimicked their lighting in their homes! Windows or candles! 

I used this dramatic one light source lighting in my Zen series. 

Two Vermeers with very different lighting. Which do you prefer?

check out James Gurney's post on warm and cool light sources and their interaction! http://bit.ly/etxmhu

Butterflies & Roses

Butterflies & Spray Roses

8" x 10"

Polychromos on Fisher 400 paper (mounted to gatorboard)

I did something last night that I haven't gotten to do for a long time: stay up drawing past midnight. This is one of the perks of moving my studio back home. The cons of course being the clutter of all my supplies and distractions, but I'll take the late night drawing sessions!

A lesson relearned: Have you ever printed out reference photos where you lighten all the shadows to see what is in them and use both the dark photo and the lightened photo in your drawing/painting?  All I can say is be careful. You can change things obviously from a photograph or life, but changing lighting is a tricky business. I printed out a dark and a  light version  of the reference for this so I could see all the subtleties in the flowers and see the edges of the bug which did not show up in the dark photo. Well... I started the flowers first with just a bit of the background in... all was going well until I switched to my darker photo for the rest. The result was garish - the flowers did not match the rest of the picture at all.  Think about it like in writing... you should not change your tenses from 1st to 3rd person in the same paper. Why would you be able to change lighting on the same drawing ? Anyway I fixed it, but it was a bit of a struggle to remove the lightened details in the petals since the lighter colors in colored pencils have more wax/oil...

That doesn't say you can't lighten things a little bit, just not so much where it is mismatched or changes the light source only on one part. Like let's say you are doing an adorable drawing of your child... but the way the light is hitting him/her his eye color is hard to see because they are in shadow. What should you do? Either draw it without the pretty eye color as in the photo or retake the reference photo with the right lighting to see their eye color! If you bring the eyes out of their shadow and don't change the lighting on the rest of the face - it will look like a demon child!

My beautiful daughter above has gorgeous blue eyes when light hits  them but when the eye sockets are even in a slight shadow like above her eye color does not show. So maybe I'll just pop up the color... I could make the eyes look gorgeous, but what  I'll have is gorgeous eyes but a final portrait with lighting that doesn't make sense. People won't know what is wrong perhaps, but their psyche will pick up that something is off.