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tony palmer

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Posted
OK, you sit back & assess your work, looks good? Just a tip - take a photo. For some reason, the photo will show up any areas needing improvement. You have the opportunity to correct/improve before you clean up the brushes & post to the site. It's as if the camera sees the work through different eyes. Works for me.
michael

Michael Edwards

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Posted
A good tip Tony. I tend to put the work aside and review it afresh a day or so later - also there's the old tip to look at it backwards through a mirror - it's surprising what this can reveal.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

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Just so's you know - I haven't been able to post a picture of the last stage of my WIP, because it looks as if my camera has died on me - it had led a long and distinguished life, in fairness. So I shall get someone to look at it later today who knows about these things (and yes, fit new batteries before any clever Dick suggests it) and if that fails to revive it, it's orf to Amazon for a new one: as if life weren't expensive enough... Tony's right - the camera will show up all sorts of things you otherwise hadn't noticed - probably partly because it sort of isolates it, and makes you look at it as though someone else had painted it: and that always makes you more critical. The other way of course is the time-honoured one of holding it in front of a mirror - it's amazing what you can notice, about balance, perspective, composition, if you do that.

Michael Robinson

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Posted
I too view using a mirror - its funny how a reversed aspect can make you see a work through fresh eyes.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

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I have this vision now of you popping outside, and peering through the window at your painting (hoping perhaps that it's undergone a magical transformation while you were nipping though the front door). I've tried some of the other things,but never that. Mind you, a friend of mine did say, when transporting some of mine to an exhibition - "Here! Your paintings look better outside than they do in!" I'm still hoping that was a compliment.
Murray Ince

Murray Ince

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Posted
A Claude mirror is a fantastic aid to assessing your work. Originally they were a black concave surfaced mirror favoured by artists in the mid to late 1800s and named after the great historical landscape painter Claude Lorrain. You can easily create your own simplified version by taking and old photograph frame with glass, replace the photograph with a plain piece of black card, the more intense the black the better the result. The image of your work will appear with simplified tonal values accentuating the darks and lights with simplified mid range tonal values. At one time it was recommended that every gentleman artist and tourist should carry a Claude mirror to view the scenery with and at one time a hotel opposite Tintern Abbey used to have a proper, large Claude mirror on its verandah to better view the abbey in. Turner no doubt had one...

Denise Cat

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I do take a photo and sometimes correct or continue with a painting and sometimes I like how the incorrectness, of it all looks and will leave it unfinished. I like the naturality of mistakes being with human nature, so sometimes, the mistakes are a part of what I may leave in a painting now. Not all paintings but some. Or, maybe that's just my excuse for not painting the perfect pic.

Alan Bickley

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I did possess a Claude mirror many years ago, a really useful simple device for establishing your tonal values, probably the most important aspect of any successful painting. I hadn’t realised that it was named after Claude Lorrain so I’ve learned something today! In all my research regarding Turner, I’ve not come across any reference to him using this device, but that’s not to say he didn’t!

Alan Morris

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If you have an iPhone (other similar devices available), use the clean screen turned off, as a black mirror.  Not quite a Claude mirror but very serviceable never the less.

Edited
by Alan Morris

IMG_6882

Paul (Dixie) Dean

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I use my iPad to photo every stage of a sketch and painting and have found it so useful for spotting mistakes . I can change to tone etc to see what it looked like . When the painting is finish I take a photo and bin all the others unless I use it for a WIP demo .