Experiment with portrait..Klimt inspired

Here is an experiment with an incomplete portrait session (due to circumstances beyond my control). I've been itching to resolve all unfinished work before my move to VA, and it was either toss the panel or go into another direction.  Going in a naturalistic direction without the on site sittings would have felt more fake to me than just riffing out into flat decorative artificiality. I think I can say with all confidence Klimt did it better. 20"x16" oil on reinforced wood panel.

Portrait

I got a better shot today. Tripods and better light make all the difference in the world. It is so much less hassle to make reproductions of work these days with digital media. I remember when (said in the same tone of voice as your grandpa telling you he walked uphill both ways to school and home as a kid) the expense and all the hassles of traditional photography slides that were required for pretty much everybody for submitting and sharing work.
These days all you need is a decent megapixel digital camera, indirect light mid day (I find direct sun on the painting tends to over highlight and shadow the brushstrokes, making it look crusty) and preferably a tripod. Use museum setting or turn off your flash. Tweak the levels in Photoshop (or other editing program) to make up for any blue tones from outdoors and you should have a decent file of your work for sharing or reproduction.

Scanners for smaller works make great reproductions too. Actually, you can scan large paintings on a small scanner and stitch them in Photoshop for really amazing quality reproductions. I should make a blog post about that later.