process

The lovely Melinda was asking me about this specimen today, so I thought I would take my answer a few steps further here and tell more of the story of acquiring it and the process of how I made a painting of it. 

Hessonite is a type of Garnet and this one has a bit of Asbestos on its bottom. This little specimen is one I got from a wonderful mineral shop in Bancroft, Ontario last summer. The old Chinese man who runs the shop makes these little hand written vellum tags for them, showing what they are and where they are from. A lot of the specimens in the shop are also from old collections and already have old handwritten or typewritten notes with them. I bought a few of these as well and they are so special! I love that sense of human history attached to the specimens. This shop (I don't know what it was called) is such a surreal and magical place - a mix of mineral and fossil specimens and Chinese antiques that seems like a location in an old novel or something - and I really hope to go back sometime this summer. Bancroft calls itself 'The Mineral Capital of Canada'. They have an event in the summer called the 'Rockhound Gemboree'(he he) which I really should try to get to this year.

so... here's some of my process:

 I position the specimen in a light tent and set up my DSLR on a tripod with a macro lens. There are some pictures of this part here. I usually take at least 40-60 shots of each specimen because the tiniest shift of angle or change of light reflections completely alters the look of the image. In some cases a specimen has several 'good sides' and I may end up doing more than one painting of the same specimen at some point, although I haven't yet. 

Then I pick my favourite shot (such as the image above), and use photoshop to blank out the background, since even though it is already white, there are often weird shadows and usually the putty used to hold the specimen in position is showing.

And here's the final painting. The colours are always a little off in the painting from the original digital photo, mostly because my main reference is an ink jet printout, which changes the colours somewhat from how they appear on the screen. In this case, the printout had deeper red tones and higher contrast. Also, I am not super exact about proportions, because I don't really have to be for it to still look right. It's not like a portrait, where if one eye is a fraction of a millimetre off, it doesn't quite look like the person. I don't usually like to show the painting and photo together, because I just notice every little inconsistency and assume that everyone else will too. But, I know that it isn't really important for the painting to be an exact replica of the photo, as long as I manage to capture the qualities of the specimen in an effective way. This one turned out alright, but it was one of the most challenging pieces I've done yet and I'm not entirely satisfied with it.

* oh, and the painting is close to the size you see it on the screen - 6x6 inches