Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The Bristol Festival of Ideas

I understand The Bristol Festival of Ideas last week was great. But I was away and missed it. Anyone have reviews? A friend says "Raymond Tallis was brilliant as always". I am now reading CP Snow's The Two Cultures because of this.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Hungary

The CREATE colour conference and workshop was very informative and enjoyable. I did not bring the correct clothes for the warm weather and suffered a bit for that. Who knew that Hungary was so tropical? I learned a bit of Hungarian and of course being able to say thank you properly goes a long way. I made new friends, too!

Kek is the colour blue in Hungarian. It is pronounced like cake.
Is that not fantastic!




Sunday, May 17, 2009

Rainy day at the new studio

Still setting up things in the new studio. Took pictures of the lovely rainy day yesterday. As always, click on image for a larger one.

Rain on the window.

Looking out from my porch at all the Cow's Parsley or Queen Anne's Lace that has overgrown the area behind my studio!

Rainy day in the garden. My studio is to the right.

Looking from the bottom of the garden. My studio is behind all that.

The path from the lower studio to my painting studio has a flower covered arched tunnel bower. I didn't know what kind of plant it was until this week when it did it's thing!

Our Laburnum walk!

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

I'm back!

I was away for a few weeks to take care of some family problems.
But all is getting better now!

Next week I am off to Hungary for the CREATE colour conference and training session. Colour scientists mix with artists and try to understand each others language. Fun times!

Here is a new thing I am working on: analysing a finished painting by making changes in Photoshop to see if it could be better if it were painted with different values, hues or combinations. Have just started trying it, may be a tool to learn more about painting. We shall see.
I started it because I always have to colour correct my photos of my paintings, they are never right. And I always have ended up playing around with them and some looked better with the additional changes. So now I am going backwards and trying to put the changes to use back in the original painting or in another painting.

Original Painting

High key. Saturated lights and few darks.

Hue variation. Closer values and less saturation.

Hue variation. Dark values. Low contrast and medium saturation.

Original oil painting of a house in Florida.

Higher contrast with more saturated lights.

Less contrast with closer values at the dark end of the scale.

Hue and contrast variation. I love this one, looks like moonlight!