How to Photograph Your Artwork

Posted on December 22, 2010 by RandyCBrown

I am not only a wildlife artist, I also have an extensive background in photography. In order to obtain high quality images of my artwork, I photograph my own paintings for digital reproduction and posting on my website. My camera of choice is a tripod mounted Nikon D200 digital SLR.

When photographing paintings, I prefer continuous directional illumination rather than a flash unit. This lighting setup creates optimum lighting on the painting’s surface and avoids harsh flash spots on the painting. I place my painting vertically in my easel to allow for accurate alignment of the painting with the camera lens. With this setup, I can accurately align the painting and the camera so they are perpendicular Continue reading →

Posted in From the Easel | Tagged aperature, digital reproduction, exposure, f-stop, histogram, how to photographs your artwork, Nikon D200 SLR, photoshop, tripod, website | Leave a comment

How to Clean Paint Brushes

Posted on December 21, 2010 by RandyCBrown

Artist Paint Brushes One of the most import tools in an artist’s tool box, in my opinion, is a good set of quality brushes. No craftsman can produce quality work with inferior grade tools. High quality paint brushes can range from a few dollars for a small round to nearly $100 for a large synthetic bristle.

No matter how much you pay for your brushes, they will not last very long if you don’t take care of them. The single most effective way to care for brushes is to keep them clean. When I’m finished painting for the day, I always wash my brushes thoroughly to keep any paint residue from building up in the bristles, especially near the ferrule.

Windsor and Newton Acrylic Artist Brushes If I’m painting with acrylic paints, Continue reading →

Posted in From the Easel | Tagged acrylic, bristles, ferrule, how to clean paint brushes, oil | 1 Comment

Acrylic Color Palette

Posted on December 20, 2010 by RandyCBrown

Acrylic Color Palette

Artists are like songwrites in a sense. If you listen to much music, the songs that most songwriters produce sound very similar from song to song. The words are different, and the melody is different, but the style and the mood of the songs are frequently very similar.

Artists seem to do the same thing with their paintings. The image may vary from painting to painting, but the overall theme of each painting is usually very similar. This is because the majority of artists usually stick with the same set of colors, and paint using the same techniques for each painting they produce.

As a wildlife artist, I’m no different. I use a very basic set of colors for the majority of my paintings. These colors are ultramarine blue, ivory black, titanium white, Continue reading →

Posted in From the Easel | Tagged acrylic paint, burnt umber, cadmium yellow medium, color palette, consistency of color, crimson, digital scales, ivory black, sap green, titanium white, ultramarine blue, Windsor and Newton | 3 Comments

Painting Trees

Posted on December 19, 2010 by RandyCBrown

painting for fun, cypress trees

In my last post, I talked about painting just for fun. I showed you how I took just three basic colors and quickly laid the foundation for a complete painting and had fun doing it. Today, I thought I would show you what I’ve done on the painting since then.

Carrying on with the same theme of the background, I mixed ultramarine blue, burnt umber, and a small amount of titanium white, which gave me a dark cool tone for my distant trees.

Using a pencil, I lightly sketched in the skeletal structure of the trees in the painting. These pencil lines indicate the structure of the trees without Continue reading →

Posted in From the Easel | Tagged atmospheric perspective, Color, cool tones, highlights, trees | Leave a comment

Painting for Fun

Posted on December 18, 2010 by RandyCBrown

As artists, we sometimes feel as though every work that we produce must meet certain standards. We place pressures on ourselves to create a masterpiece in every painting we start. I usually spend a lot of time preparing for a painting by doing sketches and studying photographs for key elements. But sometimes it’s fun just to paint without all the preparation.

Today I decided just to paint for fun. I stretched a canvas and mixed up a color that consisted of ultramarine blue, ivory black, and titanium white. This gave me a nice Continue reading →

Posted in From the Easel | Tagged clouds, Color, composition, ivory black, L shaped composition, painting for fun, titanium white, ultramarine blue | 1 Comment

Waterfowl… Why I Love to Paint Them

Posted on December 17, 2010 by RandyCBrown

Ducks are such hardy little creatures. They can live in frigid climates and thrive because they have built-in thermal insulation. They can travel thousands of miles on their migration routes using only the bodies they were given at birth.

When I first started trying to learn to paint, I was blown away by the works of such waterfowl masters as David Maass, Phillip Crowe, Maynard Reece, Jim Hautman, Ken Carlson and Larry Chandler just to name a few! I purchased a book entitled “Duck Stamps and Prints” that featured Continue reading →

Posted in From the Easel | Tagged Color, duck stamps, fog, habitat, painting waterfowl, reflection, sunrise, water, waterfowl, waterfowl masters | 2 Comments

Digital Reference Photographs

Posted on December 13, 2010 by RandyCBrown

Wildlife art for me is the creation of an image that results from imagination, preparation, dedication, and perspiration. Art without imagination would simply be the reproduction of something that already exists in nature. I have always been dedicated to whatever projects I endeavor to persue and art is no different for me. But what I really want to talk about today is the preparation and perspiration that goes into any wildlife painting I create.

For me, the hardest part of any new painting Continue reading →

Posted in Preparation | Tagged composition, creativity, dedication, imagination, light, location, nature, perspiration, photographs, planning, reference images, reproduction | Leave a comment

Hidden Refuge A Mallard Duck Painting

Posted on December 11, 2010 by RandyCBrown

wildlife art, waterfowl art, mallard ducks

"Hidden Refuge"

Back in November 2010, I began comtemplating what my next wildlife painting would be. I began doing my standard research by looking through all of my reference photographs trying to find the subject material for the painting. When I had gone through my existing photographs and did not find anything that really inspired me, I loaded up my camera equipment and my wife and headed out in the country to see what we could find.

Before we left home, I had used Google maps to locate some larger bodies of water in the county where we live and had found Continue reading →

Posted in Preparation | Tagged acrylic, belted kingfisher, Color, foliage, mallard ducks, materials, reference materials, reflection, trees, water, waterfowl | 9 Comments

How to Blend Acrylic Paints

Posted on December 7, 2010 by RandyCBrown

One of the largest complaints I’ve seen about acrylic paints for creating art is it’s quick drying time. This prevents the blending of tonal values the way oil paints can be blended. Some people refer to this effect as the paint-by-number look.

Oil paints can be blended on the canvas to achieve very subtle gradients of value from one color to another or from dark to light. Although acrylic paints can be mixed wet on the canvas for a certain amount of blending, acrylic paints dry so Continue reading →

Posted in Acrylic Painting | Tagged acrylic, Color, dark, layers, successive color, tonal values | 12 Comments

Acrylic Painting – Painting the Background

Posted on December 6, 2010 by RandyCBrown

In the numerous forums I visit, I’ve seen several questions come up about painting the background in an acrylic painting so I decided to create this post about the subject.

Acrylic painting can be done in several different painting styles depending on the effect that the artist is trying to achieve. Acrylic paint can be applied using the same techniques that are used to create watercolor paintings in that the paint is applied in very thin layers known as washes. One popular technique is known as impasto where the paint is Continue reading →