Collaging myself onto a famous painting and then Hand Colouring

An example I made for yesterday's "Hand colouring photographs" workshop at the Museum Of     Australian Photography, this collage is based on Charles Conder's famous impressionist painting of the Mentone Baths. I grew up near them.

Both Conder's painting and my photo were printed on a laser printer. My photo was cut out and stuck down with diluted PVC glue. I also gave the collage a little wash of Gesso (50% diluted) to give the very absorbent paper a light sizing to better hold water colour. I then use my watercolour to build up a few coloured washes over the collage.

Link to a pdf of the step by step

Tomorrow :: A different kind of photowalk

 It's Tomorrow, so don't delay registering

Have some fun experimenting with different ways to handcolour old or new photos. While you are at MAPh have a look at ZAHALKAWORLD, particularly her hand coloured collages and recoloured old photos as inspiration.

What's in my Camera Bag Now?

It’s been a while since  I posted what’s in my “travel” camera bag. It's got a lot smaller. Back in the day before I retired and was travelling internationally too much My camera gear took up most of my backpack as well an extra camera bag or two. There was quite a lot to carry around and I still often forgot extra batteries or specific cables or card readers. Things changed a lot and I probably have purchased too many different camera bags (and more than one backpack). Such is life.

A Think Thank Mirrorless Mover bag and my little mirrorless OMD10 opened my eyes to the lighter and happier world of smaller kit. 

Over time yet a smaller lowpro shoulder bag and another Olympus has joined my gear. Now everything is in one bag, available at any time, its easy to pick up the bag and I’m off. It currently houses two small Olympus bodies, new OMD5 & original OMD10, 4 lenses, extra batteries, memory cards and other paraphernalia. I have everything I need.  

The small travel tripod (it's very light and fits nicely in my suitcase case and some of the ancillary gear, like a wireless WIFI modem, battery charger and extra USB cables travel in my luggage. When away for extended periods I also pack an external USB harddrive for backup and my old HP Spectre laptop (not shown in the photos). 

The phone, which does sport a decent camera, travellers in my pocket.

Why I like Water Brushes

I've been using water brushes for some time, I particularly loved them in the field with a small portable palette, like my little Cotman sketcher box. Alas, I tend to lose them.

On a recent visit to the art shop, I found that Derivan now makes a set of four refillable brush pens. This set is reasonably priced and comes in different tip sizes and a larger barrel capacity. The brushes are made of nylon hairs, one Chisel tip and the other is pointed rounds of three sizes. They are designed for both water and Derivan’s acrylic inks. I decided to add my watercolour ink, diluted about 50% to one of the middle-sized round tips as a worthwhile addition to my sketching stuff. The idea is it could add the mid-tones while I just sketched with a normal black pen. This combination struck me as ideal for getting that first compositional/tonal sketch down quickly. It worked perfectly.

I chose the cyan ink just because I've been using the cyan gel pen which blends in quite well if you want to paint over the top of it. Also, I didn't have any grey watercolour ink on hand. At some future stage, I'll probably try diluted fountain pen ink but I will avoid Indian Inks it's likely to come up the brush tip.

If you want a laugh, read how ChatGPT rewrote this post for Instagram, less the outrageous bit I removed.

Secure Drawingboard Tripod Mount

It was time to update my flimsy method of connecting my sketch board to a tripod (it was just a ¼” nut glued onto the back of a plywoodboard).

I had been given a wonderful little connector which can be hammered into the board (I now know they are called T-Nuts ¼” or maybe barrel nuts and used extensively in prefabricated furniture manufacture). I decided to add a separate piece/pad to hold the nut securely in place (with gorilla glue this time).

I have a variety of tripods and camera plates to allow connection to tripods and other stands, and they are different sizes. Also, the tripods they serve have different heads allowing different movements. I made this extra pad square with the maximum dimension of connector plates (70cm) so I could mount this either way (with the board either vertically or horizontally aligned). Importantly with the rotate/tilt handle easily accessed from the front, so you don’t need to get up to adjust the drawing/painting surface. I also added a layer of the “bubbly” rubber sheet sold for lining kitchen pot and pan draws to provide a very sound surface for the plate to screw into and hold firm.

The result is versatile and holds firm, from my lightweight portable tripod to a desk mounting position and all other options.

Pastel Plein Air Kit Colour Selection

I’ve rearranged my soft pastel plein air kit (actually just two plastic boxes with a minimal set of useful colours in ”half sticks” that I might find handy for sketching). Making them into a set of the 6 primary colours I use (RGB + CYM), plus a neutral greyish column and a couple of columns of earth colours. Within each colour group, I have something intense along with lighter and darker tonal variations including very soft and harder composition pastels

Let's see how I go. I’m sure to need to change out and swap a few sticks. BUT the new arrangement looks nice.