Sunday, 17-Jan-16 15:53:32 CET

Francesca 17 January 2016

It is Sunday again and it is time for a model session at de Stoker in Amsterdam. Today it was a sunny winter day as winter days are supposed to be. Normally I talk public transport to de Stoker but occasionally I take the car to the studio and this was such a day. The drawback is that I cannot write on today’s blog post like I do while I am in the train but on the other hand I get to the studio in 36 minutes from door to door. Normally it takes two hours.

So all blogging here I did after today’s session. Today the model was the Italian model Francesca for the second time. I had decided to create a painting from scratch and concentrate on the contrast and using more colors.

While I worked on the painting I challenged myself to create differences in dark and light and warm and cold. So from left to right I created a cold background. It was very dark but Francesca’s hair was darker but warm. The right side of her face I made dark and cold while the background was light and warm. I got completely enthusiastic about this deliberate color plan. Actually I think I did a better job in capturing her face last time but this cold next too warm and dark next to light contrasts worked very well so the overall result was better than last week. The leatherjacket got more attention this time. Also in there I used cold and warm next to each other.

Today Luc, Bas, Lotte, Jochem and Saskia attended the session.

Francesca had her mouth open slightly. She is doing that. Her teeth could be seen and she had a golden earring.

How do you take a proper photo of a wet painting indoors in the evening in the winter?

This is actually more difficult than you can imagine. One way of doing it is by using two polarization filters. One in front of the camera lens and the other in front of the flash light and the theory is that the picture taken will be without any glare at all. The flash needs to be on full power and the camera on high sensitivity. This is just theory because I have not tried this myself. This was something Frank Top talked about. I found another method that works for me, it is not a completely glare free result but since I don’t have any filter this is what I do. You can use any camera with my method.

So my method is that if you take the photo of the painting slightly from the side then some of the glare is avoided. If you use a tripod, then it is better. In my example here I used no tripod. My photo got slightly blurred because of that.

Since you want a photo as if it was taken right from the front we need to do some adjustments of the photo. I normally use the free tool “GIMP”. Load the photo and press Shift P to start the Perspective Tool. Then drag the corners until the painting has straight sides. Next launch the selection tool and set it to the aspect ratio of the painting. In my case it was 30:40. Then we make sure that the painting fit the selection. If the painting needs to be longer then you can use the Scale Tool Shift + T and when that done you crop to the selection. When the image is cropped I open the Colors Levels window and I drag the start and end marker so that the entire diagram is in use and then I correct the middle to my taste. That is it!

Francesca like to talk about image technology, it has to do with her art what she is making. In the breaks we had some chats about things like that. Today I used a word she liked a lot “Augmented Reality”. She got an exhibition on Sunday 31 of January at “Bradwolff Projects” in Amsterdam. Perhaps I can make it to get there?