Capturing My Paintings : To mock or not to mock, that is the question.

I mentioned before that natural light is like a kaleidoscope for paintings but in general, any lighting can be; often bringing hues to the forefront (or the opposite) depending on the angle that they are captured from and type of lighting that they are captured in. It's much easier said than done. Frustrating but also fascinating and often why I, and I'm sure many other artists say that there is nothing like seeing a work of art in the flesh — because there isn't. When interacting with art that you've purchased. you have more control in experimenting with lighting and positioning it at angles that flatter, compliment or show you the full spectrum of hues present within a given piece. 

Chasing the perfect lighting can be very time-consuming. Many people make use of art mockups. Art mockups are essentially a preview of what a painting could look like in a home or in a tasteful display scenario. Basically it's a work of art positioned into a minimally decorated room or section of a room (like on a tabletop, against a wall or behind a couch.)

For my mockups, I use scanned images of my art, as these are the most accurate images and are an accurate representation of how my paintings appear. Photographing my art is a time-consuming, iffy process that often leaves me frustrated that my camera won't or can't capture the hues present within my paintings. It sucks when that happens. As an artist, few things are worse than spending hours on a painting and then not being able to properly capture that effort. It is intensely frustrating and I have had times where I've taken over 300 photos of one painting to try and capture how it actually looks, through a lense. That was not fun.

I prefer scanning all of my paintings to capture texture, deeper hues and composition. It's nice to then go and find the frames that I have bought and add them within the image to properly show how my paintings appear.