Red Chasing Yellow

It is almost abstract, I agree. Wonderful strong shapes and such dynamic colours - it has great impact. P.S. Re your photography advice - and your white paper does look very white!

Thanks Thea. I struggle a lot with photographing watercolours and getting it right - if its too bright then I tend to loose the texture of the watercolour paper, if its too dull then my whites have a bluey grey tinge to them along with the rest of the colours. My girlfriend always says that my paintings in real life are a lot better than my photographs of them which does annoy me lol. I would love to see someone put up a blog who knows how to do this correctly, it would be so helpful.

I do so agree, Joseph. I think my originals always look a lot better than the photos I take of them, which is so frustrating. The thing is that my husband is a very good photographer (check out -rogercable2011 on Flickr if you want to see some of his work), camera club president, won some competitions, etc - so quite an expert, particularly with digital photography and he says it is an impossible task unless you have a properly set up photographic studio with white umbrella light reflectors and proper lighting, etc. He has tried to photograph my paintings unsuccesfully and it isn't the expertise in the end, according to him, it is how the camera sees white and then how it relates all the colours back to white. It is much easier to photograph a painting that has all the white paper completely covered with colour. What a lot of good photographers do is photograph work with a very small pure white square of paper in the corner of what you are photographing. Then you use Photoshop and click on the square and tell Photoshop to relate all colours back to that pure white so that all the whites in the image become a true white. The problem with watercolour paper is that it isn't white, even the one I use called 'extra white' isn't actually white. So what happens when you click on the white square is that it decides that the square is the pure white and it makes your watercolour paper look yellowy or creamy because it isn't actually white (if that makes any sense). Lots of people will tell you that they do this or that and get a perfect image but often they are photographing paintings with very little white in them and not the amount both you and I often have in our work, so their images turn out just fine. I, like you, would love to solve this problem and I have tried just about every combination I can to no avail. I have even taken paintings to various locations and lighting levels around the house, garden, etc - but no luck.

You seem to know exactly when to stop and your wet on wet technique is just perfect and never overworked Joseph. I love these 'experimental' paintings of yours.

Thanks Louise - I'll try and do a few more of these as they are good fun to do. Thea thanks for the above information - I thought it was just me going mad lol. The best natural place I have found is in my bathroom lol - don't ask me why but they always seem to look ok (maybe because my bathroom walls are almost white - not sure. So its hit n miss - sometimes they're shot in the bathroom, sometimes in the room with my lamp (the darker ones without any white tend to be ok with the lamp (apart from the odd reflection where I've really put a lot of paint on the image).

Thea - your husband is an awesome photographer - just had a look at his stuff. Fantastic

Roger will be really chuffed that you think that about his photos. Thank you. He is off to Paris in a week or so on another photographic trip so that might produce a few good ones. However, it would seem that photography is a lot like painting - he can take over 1,000 photos and only get a handful of ones that he would rate.

Lol I agree - I can do numerous paintings of one subject and only one is good. Hope your husband has a nice time in Paris.

Yes, this makes me think of Starsky and Hutch (the original). With regard to photographing. I have my reds turn very pink ... and the camera wants a flash in daylight!!!