Before the Rainbow
This is the finished painting, “Before the Rainbow”. The colors are quite bright blue even though it’s during a rainstorm. Even though I like it, I would say this painting is a good example of “overpainting”. The original, which looked more like the “before” photos below (taken with my phone, so they are rather bad) was much more free-flowing, wild and abstract. I then proceeded to mostly paint over most of it, which wasn’t what I intended to do! But sometimes, that happens.
The end result is still a stormy sea with rain and a beach, but it’s much less freely done and less abstract than I intended. It’s important for artists to know when to stop painting, just as it’s important to have some kind of plan when you start to paint, but even so, sometimes you get happy accidents. Sometimes you don’t.
You can see, and even buy, this painting on Leitworks Studio.
How it started:
This was a test of remote posting, mainly because I am now without a regular camera. I’m using my Blackberry camera and therefore using it [the BB] to write this too. Looks like it works for one photo at least. This painting is another abstract, this time inspired by a trip to CR last year.
Update: Well, that was posted with my phone, but the usual way of posting is much easier! Also, I thought I sent two photos to WordPress and it looks like only one make it through. Ah, technology.
The photo is not nearly that black in reality, the scene is more blue and green and quite colorful, and I’m hopefully going to finish it tonight or tomorrow night.
My briefly-owned point and shoot camera, the Nikon S8100, has been returned to B&H, and I ordered another one that will enable me to take fantastic photos of all my artwork. The Nikon, much to my shock, was awful, and couldn’t focus except sporadically. The photos taken with it were only good if they were outside photos and even then the color and lighting was off. I wouldn’t recommend that camera to anyone. Why mess around with another disappointing camera? The new one on its way to me is a DSLR, a Pentax, and it is pictured below.
Pentax K-r DSLR
After a lot of research, I decided to spring for a “real” camera. I did learn some serious photography in college, but I was using a SLR film camera, not a DSLR, back then. That was eons ago, so this will be more or less a totally new experience for me. The good part is that I love photography too and this blog will now include some great photos, not just my painting and scribblings.
Obviously, no one should rely on their Blackberry or iPhone camera for too much, but it’s amazing that something so small can also be a camera and even take videos.
*The camera was available in standard black, bright Pentax Red, and Stormtrooper “classic” White. I ordered the White!
Hey my name is Joyce
I definitely agree with you. And I’m happy you made a a couple of posts on how great the pentax kr camera is because i just bought the same exact one for many purposes, similar to yours and im glad you assured that this is a great camera. I havent seen as many reviews on the pentax kr and i was a little worried at first because i wasnt too sure about this camera and i definitely wanted to take pictures of my own artwork as well. I thought that the best camera would be to only use the nikon dslr camera but after seeing your posts im happy to have made my decision and reassuring myself that it was the right decision! So thank you for making a review on this camera! it helps a lot
Hi Joyce, I have had no problems with my KR and I still use it, and I still love it. There have been some complaints on photography forums about a focusing issue under tungsten lighting, but it’s an issue I have not detected at all, and wouldn’t have even known existed if I hadn’t read about it. I have the white version of the KR and think it’s a very cool camera. It takes incredibly good photos. I did buy some new lenses for it though (used actually, on eBay and one through the Pentax forum). They helped quite a bit. I didn’t think the lens it came with was very good. I also prefer manual focus when photographing my artwork, so maybe that’s why I didn’t detect any focusing issues under indoor lighting.
I do most of my artwork photography with the KR but many of the photos on this blog were taken with my little Canon or my Blackberry. Some day I will have to put more of my Pentax photos here and on my other websites.