The 25th of May is A very special day on the Discworld. It's a day for remembering those we lost.
In the book The Nights Watch by Terry Pratchett, we see lilacs of remembering the Glorious Revolution. A hard boiled egg also factors into it. It's a great book and I thought it would be fun to paint something to remember it by.
This is the story of the painting process. I hope it turns out well.
Sadly, I don't have a copy of the book and the library has a ridiculously long wait list on any terry Pratchett book. So I did the next best thing to reading, I asked permies. There are some great ideas. But as I only have 10 days and am still struggling to learn to paint, I choose a simple motif.
Lilacs
Hard Boiled Egg
Tea
The Planning and reference
I am trying to get better at making thumbnail sketches, so I started there.
It's okay I guess. I kind of like the top center one and the more I look at these, the more I feel I want to go with a square format. I didn't draw any square ones, but the feeling was strong.
Next I figured out how to hard boil some eggs and did a photo shoot.
I played with composition a lot but also lighting. When it comes to photography and painting, lighting is the thing that gets me excited. I don't mind the subject so much, so long as the lighting is fun.
It's late afternoon and the window faces east, so it's diffused lighting to the right. It's not too bad. Very crisp, Victoriana look. No strong shadows. Pastels. But not really getting the feel of The Glorious Revolution.
I close the blinds and I get my standing lamp with daylight bulb (about 5k kelvin). This has the light focused on the flowers just above the handle and gives the egg a fun 3D effect.
This very very close to what I want.
I am especially glad I used a tripod and remote shutter button so I could shoot at 11 ISO stops, 100 iso, and get a deeper depth of field.
Almost no editing needed. Cranked the contrast up 0.2 points and exposure up 0.33 (which doesn't make sense because each program uses a different number - basically, it's the smallest amount I can move the slider in that program)
But something still isn't quite right yet.
Lights and shadows are in my mind. Then I remembered that the book is probably named after the painting. The Nights Watch by Rembrandt. Rembrandt lighting is famous as he loves having the dark in the back and a directional beam of light on the subject. So I think, what's the least amount of mucking about with this image I can do to get that effect? Vignette!
This is what I settled on and got my copy printed at the local print shop today so I can use it as a reference.
It was kind of annoying (in an okay way) as he pestered me with all sorts of questions about the software I used to generate the image. Was it photoshop or did I use AI to make it better? I don't think he believed me when I said I just do all the work before pressing the shutter.
I wonder if most people think that way now. Only 3 years since Chat GDP and we are already trained to think all dramatic images are AI. scary stuff.
Maybe I choose the wrong one?
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