Swamp

"Swamp". acrylics on canvas board, 14"x18"

Searching for inspiration, I turned to Illustration Friday, a site that posts weekly one-word prompts for art-making. This week's prompt was "swamp," so this is what I came up with. In the process of doing this I (or one of my cats, I can't remember who) spilled a my paint water all over the counter. I have two laptops and a clock/radio/speakers thing on the counter, so I checked where the water went and it appeared to have spilled on the carpet. I didn't think much of this and went back to painting. Shortly after my (brand new, beloved) laptop shorted out. This confused me (I still didn't make the connection) so I just went to bed. Then the next morning I tried to turn it on to no avail. I then picked up the laptop to discover it was literally sitting in a puddle of water. Wow. Not so smart on me. Since it's new it's still under warranty and hopefully can be repaired. We'll see. I have my little Asus Eeeeeee PC as back-up.

As you can see from the above picture, I'm having a lot of difficulty photographing my art. I've been taking photos with a Canon Elph or... (don't laugh) my camera phone. Then I put it in Picasa and touch it up a bit before posting it. Usually it looks borderline acceptable, but not this time. The shiny acrylics made it hard to take a photo without glare from the surrounding light. Any tips out there for taking decent photographs of your art? I'm not going to buy a new camera or special lights, I just want it to look decent enough for the blog, and eventually my website/portfolio.

*Update: I messed with it a little bit in Gimp and used the burn tool to take out the uneven lighting, so it looks a little better now.

After my last post I got a couple of requests for commission portraits- one involving a certain family member, and it's looking great so far! Hopefully I don't mess it up before it's finished;) So I'm excited about that, and I will share it with you as soon as it's done and delivered to the appropriate parties (it's a gift, hence the vagueness, but I wanted to give you a little teaser anyway)!