The season of intense colours is coming to an end and you too might have been taking pictures. For some years I remember feeling puzzled by the results. The trees invariably seemed drabber and less gloriously bright than I had remembered them.
It took a combination of experience with digital photography and glaze oil technique to figure it out. The first helpful hint was Kathy Bailey's cautioning me that digital saps red, often rendering it as pink, and so I learned to tweak the red setting. But I only recently realized what else was misleading me: I always wear brown sunglasses out of doors.
Now brown is not so much a colour as a combination of primaries. We were told in grade school that you could create it by mixing red and green. It would have been more helpful to have said "red and blue and yellow." In fact I often apply a transparent brown glaze over sections of a painting not only to unify it but also to enrich the tones. I suspect that is what happens when we choose to "enhance" a photo. Alternatively I can simply remember the scene that caught my eye and manually adjust the digital image to recapture it. I'm always on the hunt for juicey colour.
So, counter-intuitively, it turns out that I am one for whom our colourful world has been most happily viewed through brown-coloured glasses. (Speaking of which, my bifocals have surfaced but the red high heel is still AWOL. Any sightings? I suspect that little devil may be out on the town somewhere!)
It took a combination of experience with digital photography and glaze oil technique to figure it out. The first helpful hint was Kathy Bailey's cautioning me that digital saps red, often rendering it as pink, and so I learned to tweak the red setting. But I only recently realized what else was misleading me: I always wear brown sunglasses out of doors.
Now brown is not so much a colour as a combination of primaries. We were told in grade school that you could create it by mixing red and green. It would have been more helpful to have said "red and blue and yellow." In fact I often apply a transparent brown glaze over sections of a painting not only to unify it but also to enrich the tones. I suspect that is what happens when we choose to "enhance" a photo. Alternatively I can simply remember the scene that caught my eye and manually adjust the digital image to recapture it. I'm always on the hunt for juicey colour.
So, counter-intuitively, it turns out that I am one for whom our colourful world has been most happily viewed through brown-coloured glasses. (Speaking of which, my bifocals have surfaced but the red high heel is still AWOL. Any sightings? I suspect that little devil may be out on the town somewhere!)
"Misty Morning on The Rocky" Diptych panel #2 30 x 30 glaze oil
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