My Teacup Collection

MIA WROTE: "What a lovely collection, Thea, and as always perfectly executed in your own personal style". Thank you so much, Mia, and I am sorry that I had to delete and re-post your comment. I am a rubbish photographer and my camera just laughs at me when I try to take a decent shot.

A change of subject can only improve observational skills I think. You've looked hard and yet kept to your own style of working. it's a lovely painting.

I saw this a couple of days ago and was just about to post a comment when it disappeared! An interesting painting and difficult, I should think, not to get bogged down with the detail on the cups. I think it's lovely.

Delicate and dainty came to mind when I first saw this Thea. I don't even think that the original grey photo would have detracted anything away from your beautiful painting style.

Thank you Louise, Christine and Fiona for your lovely feedback. Christine, I did post it and then saw the image on my screen and it looked positively dismal, which is a shame as I always need the paper to shine white to show up the colours I use. I have a continuing problem with photographing my paintings because they always include so much white paper which seems to turn out grey and dirty looking. I use Fabriano Extra White paper to try and get that whiteness, but even that doesn't seem to make any difference. So I re-photographed it and tried again and it was a bit of an improvement. Sorry if I confused anyone!

Great still life Thea. Finding the next subject can sometimes be a bit difficult so sometimes I just paint anything to spark something off. Yes I find it also really difficult to photograph watercolours for some reason. Some colours seem to reflect if you shine too much light on the image and if you don't the paper seems to be grey. Wish someone would do a blog on tips for how to do this right as I'm useless at it lol

Such a lovely collection of beautiful and delicate looking teacups Thea. This is a really beautiful painting too and you can be very proud of it! I take all my photos for POL with my iPad, it's easy and quick and you can edit the photo straight away. You could try it?!

A lovely loose painting Thea, with just the right amount of detail in the patterns. I have recently started painting in watercolour and cannot get out of the oil painting habit - i.e. thick and detailed! I like the lush colours used by Shirley Trevena in her work - but mine just look heavy handed. Practice, practice!

Thank you very much Joseph, Satu and Julie for your positive comments - much appreciated and valued. Joseph, I get hopping mad when I photograph a painting and it comes out looking downright dingy - the white paper looking as grey as grandma's old knickers and the colours looking dulled. I don't know what the answer is. I use a very white paper in the hope that this will help and I use a good camera which has been set up (by photographer husband) to make the whites look as white as possible. I've tried over exposing the photo and then adjusting the colours in PhotoShop but that doesn't work either. Nothing works. Some paintings are a doddle to photograph and others have you gritting your teeth. The thing is that you work hard on a painting and want to show it to it's best effect and this photographing issue really gets in the way. Satu, I do photograph with my iPad but I find the images don't translate onto POL's gallery without becoming rather blurry. The site has a problem with making images look blurred in the first place, but the iPad photos seem to make it worse. With this painting, the original is so much fresher with clearer colours shown to advantage on the extra white Fabriano paper I use. If I could only replicate that........!!

Lovely delicate painting Thea, such a pity you can't get a better image to post, I never have much luck either when posting work on here, like you say they always come out blurry!

adjust the brightness of photo in your photo editor. It's not cheating. You have seen how dingy my sketches are, so I investigated solution! It does work, and you can tell if you overcompensate and alter feel of image. Lovely dainty cups and lovely colours.

Lovely! I love your collection Thea, well done with the painting you have done them justice.

beautiful loose painting fabulous colours Thea

They make a great composition, with all the varying shapes, patterns and pretty colours. How did you get all those gold edges - they really stand out. Agree with Gudrun regarding the white areas - have you tried the "adjust brightness" button in your picture editor?

What a lovely collection of china cups Thea which you have immortalized in an even lovelier painting.

Thank you very much Gudrun, Debs, Carole, Sandy, Val and Annette for such nice comments - lovely of you to stop by and give me some feedback. Gudrun, the 'gold' on the rims is a combination of Aureolin and Daniel Smiths Verona Ochre (much nicer colour than the normal yellow ochre in my view). Annette, thank you for the advice on photographing. I use Photo Shop, Snapseed and also adjust photos in Picasa, where I store my photos. All have the facility to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, ambiance and shadows to varying ways. I use all these programmes routinely. Some paintings will photograph perfectly and very little adjustment needs to be made to get them back to the original. Others are much more tricky and I think it depends on the colours in the actual painting and the amount of white paper. White is such a difficult colour for a camera and although the paper I use, Fabriano Artistico Extra White, is whiter than normal watercolour paper, it still isn't a true white. If you try and adjust for a true white (place a very small square of true white paper in the corner of the painting you are photographing and then, using Photoshop, adjust all colours to this) it makes the watercolour paper look tinged with yellow. Also there is the problem of the light at the actual time you are photographing a painting because it varies from day to day and time of day. North light will give a blue tinge and south light gives a warmer, slightly yellow, tinge. Adjusting brightness is easy, but it will naturally bleach all the other colours out and then they will need adjusting. It isn't hard to do this and it doesn't always produce the result you want. It isn't a perfect science by any means as there are huge variable given that every painting is very different in tone and colour. The other problem is that we look at paintings on all our individual screens and I bet they look different on each one as they are all calibrated particular to that computer.

A beautifully painted piece, Thea! The palette is gorgeous, and I think you've captured just the right amount of detail - enough to convey the lovely designs but without making the piece look fussy.

Exquisite Thea. They look like a gaggle of Fabergé eggs with their distinctive enamels and golds. Just enough detail to hint at motifs on the cups, but not enough to bore us. The composition is well balanced and intriguing as it should be in still life painting (says he who never attempted it...). What's missing? Abbey Crunches.

This is just lovely Thea. You really paint like Charles Reid and it is gorgeous! I wish I was as good as this!