Taking pictures of my paintings

Portrait of Tanya - by Bruce Skillicorn

I don't have a lot of time this morning to post so here goes. I spent much of my spare time last night fighting with the social media thing. There is a lot to learn since we were for years on dial up. I was good though and got some of the color blocked in on the beach painting though. I will talk about what I have done there next time after I have taken pictures of it.

For all they say about using two daylight flood light etc. I found that I usually get very good results by just laying the painting out in the sun so that the direction of its rays are coming at about a 45 degree angle.so that there is no reflection. I use a Sony DSC H9 camera usually set on automatic, and try to center as much a possible with a little zoom so that the edges of the painting are at least straight. I also place a piece of white paper next to it so that I can do a white balance on the computer. I have two small programs I use for all my digital work. The first is a free beta program Microsoft image composer 1.5 that came out around 2000. A wonderfully flexible little program without all the automated bells and whistles of new cheap, or expensive photo shop type programs. The other is ACDSee 12 between them I can do anything I want. On ACDSee I do white balance and get the colors right. Then I crop it down to the slightly twisted image. Then on MIC I can morphed the painting the get it squared up and exactly the right proportions before doing a final crop. It sounds like a lot, but it really only takes about 5 minutes per image, and the results are superb. The dogs want to be put out and be fed, so I will leave you with a painting I did of one, Tanya.