Mixed Media Art. Photography. Inspiration.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

New Textured Metallic Painting














I've got a new mixed media painting to show you.  It's textured.  It's metallic.  It's got lots of layers.


What does all that mean?  It means it's one of the world's hardest paintings to photograph and get the colors accurate.  No... seriously.  The metallic pewter color (and a bit of copper) on this has such a pretty luminous glow to it, not the harsh shiny metallic,... but is a PAIN to photograph!  Trust me on this.  I had the same problem with my "Chemistry of Copper" painting (same products).  Metallics are tough to photograph.  You want a bit of a glare to show the lustery goodness, but too much of a glare makes all the pretty colors go away... so it tends to either look too dark, or too washed out.  And because I'm Anal Annie when it comes to getting things right... I photographed this piece FIVE times over the last week.  Yup.






Wow.  Big tangent.

Anywho... here's my latest painting...The first photo at the top of this post seems to reflect more copper in the top right corner than it has in person, but the rest of it is pretty accurate... maybe.



Because I know you're like me (scary), I know you'd like to see this painting's ugly beginning.  It started as a scrap canvas... used to scrape leftover paint products onto so I didn't waste any.  Talk about yucky, but a nice way to start building texture for a future painting!

















Oh boy, I just realized something.  I have about six paintings going right now... and half of them are done with these metallics... so I'm either going to...

1. get really frustrated photographing them and give up metallics
2. strangle myself
3. get really good at photographing metallics
or
4. loosen up my perfectionist nature and adopt a "eh... close enough" type attitude (HA!).  

Stay tuned to see what happens... I'm a bit curious myself  ;-)



13 comments:

Mandy said...

well...it looks fantastic regardless of the "dodgy" photos...seriously i love all those layers of yummy goodness....queen of texture ...i say it all the time!!!xxx

Two Dog Pond said...

I agree with Mandy - it's beautiful in the photos - probably would take our collective breaths away to see it in person! (which would send our collective heads crashing to our keyboards). All in all - STUNNING.

Jo-Ann Dziubek-MacDonald said...

Ohhhh....STUNNING!! I Love this piece, so much AMAZING texure, WOW!!

Thespoena McLaughlin said...

Gorgeous! I'm in love! Great texture and the colors are perfect! Hugs!

Diane said...

It's beautiful Esther!! I know just what you're talking about when it comes to the metallics.
When I make my embossed metal pieces--they're such a pain to get "just right" in a photo--I'm never happy with the photos.
But I know this is gorgeous--I can see it!

Single Stone Studios said...

I broke out my mettalic paint this morning! I don't use it often but had an idea I wanted to try. So fun to see this metallic painting. Gorgeous work!!

Anonymous said...

Oh my word! I love it! Yumminess personified. All those layers and the texture!

Pamela Holderman said...

They look good to me, but it is always frustrating to not be able to get a photo of your art that looks right. Thanks for stopping by my blog and following.

Lesley Edmonds said...

I just think this is wonderful! It looks covered in Verdigris! I need to smooth it!!!!
x

Catherine Denton said...

This is beautiful. I love the close-up where I can see the grit of it.

And I LOVE your idea of a scrap canvas where you scrap off extra paint. My daughter's been making a paint ball with my leftovers. ha. Found you through Mandy's Eight is Enough blog and glad I did.
Catherine Denton

Daniele Valois said...

beautiful!!!

Kristin said...

You are singing my song! YES, I had such a hard time photographing my last two art things, and I felt like they just kept getting washed out. AND yes I used metallics. BUT I KNOW you won't give them up . . . cause they're so pretty . . . so, I will just learn photography tricks from you!
LOVE the piece btw: TG is on it! xoxoxo

Sada said...

Lovin' it! metallics rock...and so do you!
xo
Sada
Dressology HQ