Funky roses under wrong light

Oil on canvas board, 12×16
Click image to enlarge, select All Sizes

My next door neighbor was about to toss this bouquet of roses on Friday because they were at that funky, fully-bloomed, starting to get a little stinky stage, but I swooped in before they could go in the recycling bin and rescued them to paint. I was trying hard to loosen up and have a more painterly, impressionist way of painting them. But I discovered the importance of good lighting when mixing colors and painting with oils.

The painting looked really pretty while I was painting under the lights I’d rigged up to my easel. But the next day when I looked at it in daylight it looked like dull mud instead of brilliant. The lights I was using were too much on the pinkish side which made all the colors I mixed look much pinker and brighter than they really were so once the lights were off…mud.

Above, top left: my new Verilux florescent lighting. Top center: outdoors at noon. Below, top right: the lighting I was painting under originally.

I started researching lighting for easel painting, and after buying numerous different “full spectrum” and halogen lamps, I finally found a solution that worked: an overhead florescent light fixture designed for kitchens with 4 Verilux full spectrum florescent bulbs. The fixture has electronic ballast that prevents typical florescent noise and flicker. The light is amazing–very much like bright noon sunlight. Maybe even a little too bright, but I’m not sure because I’m slightly migrainey today, making my eyes overly sensitive. If it’s too bright I can swap out any of the bulbs for a warmer or cooler version, according to the lighting store where I bought it.

To test all the various lights I tried, I set my camera at “sunlight” and then took pictures under all the different lighting arrangements of the same image and they all came out terrible. With my new light and the camera set at sunlight, I took this picture and it is pretty accurate! Yay. A good painting light and a good photography light!

Here’s all the stuff that didn’t work:

• an Ott floor lamp that gave virtually no light at all
• a Verilux floor lamp that gave twice as much light (but twice nothing isn’t much) but the light was very blue and only from one side — nowhere near enough to paint by
• an easel lamp designed for my easel that is attached at the top to the center post — tried it with a verilux full spectrum bulb, a screw in halogen, a GE Reveal bulb (these are evil–they make everything look beautiful but are way too pink and that’s what messed everything up)
• a “Combo Lamp” clamped to the side of the easel — it has a circular florescent and a regular light bulb in the middle (these are what I use on my drawing table, one on each side and they work great for watercolor and drawing).
• Halogen torchieres in the room already
• A photo light stand with a variety of different bulbs in it
• All of the above

Then after all that shopping, I had to do an equal amount of unshopping! Yuck. What a way to spend my days off. But thanks to my darling son who helped me hang the new light fixture in the studio, at least I have my new light all set up–just in time to go back to work.