C.M. Simpson: Art and Photography: January 2015

Wednesday 21 January 2015

Where I'm up to - Taking Stock

So, the last year got a bit busy and then ended... poorly. Not much arting got done. Except for a couple of covers, and I have yet to post on the how-tos of those. So, to start the new year, I took stock of where I'd been with my drawing and my picture-taking and so forth, and this year I vowed I would do better.

So, I took stock by looking back over what I had done last year, and identifying areas that needed improvement, and then I decided on a couple of projects.

Refamiliarise with materials: I'm so out of touch with the whole painting and drawing thing that I've lost touch with what all that painting and drawing stuff can do. So, I found a book to help me along the way. Now, just doing prescribed activities probably isn't going to be enough, just as doing targeted writing activities wouldn't be enough to improve my writing. I also need to work on something that I really want to work on. Problem was, I didn't know what that was, so I fell back to a familiar theme and something that interests me at the moment.

Dragons: Work on my dragons. Just keep drawing line drawings until I felt confident enough to move into other materials, such as coloured pencil, pastels (oil and chalk), and maybe... just maybe, watercolours or gouache. Maybe by the end of the year, I'll be seeing an improvement. In the meantime, here is last night's dragon sketch - unedited.

Beetles: I had a few photographs that inspired this one, and I'd been pursuing these big 'Christmas' beetles for weeks until I'd worked out which trees I could find them on. And then I took photographs, and now I'm ready to draw. Not exactly sure what genre or style or whatever, but I'll figure it out.

Spiders: They're an on-going fascination, but the beetles take precedence.

Problem Areas: highlighted by this picture. As you can see, I need to work on a lot of things: perspective, colour, plant shape and form, lizard anatomy, weapons and proportion. I'll start small and work bigger. Again, we'll see where it takes me.

First steps will just be to play within the themes above, and to start to enjoy drawing and the process of making pictures again - it has been a long time, since I did this, and I've missed it, but been too busy to get back to it. I figure it will take me a year before I can start thinking bigger projects. Baby steps, but it's time to get back into it.

Sunday 4 January 2015

First Night Shots of a Spider - January 2015

I won't go into the stupidity of the last four months, but you have my apologies for the break. Even with an internet deficiency looming, I'll try and get back into the swing of things with the following pics of a spider weaving its evening web.

This is the first time I've ever shot at the darker end of dusk - and managed to get results. I tried a couple of things.

I'm not set up to shoot insects or spiders or other little things. I don't have a macro. What I have is a zoom lens and a little Canon DS. I'm still learning.

And, last night, I learnt a little bit more. I saw this little beauty weaving her evening web while I was out watering the garden. From what I can see on Alan Henderson's photograph on the 'Minibeasts Wildlife' site, this is a garden orb weaver (possibly an Eriophora biapicata) - and she stopped me in my tracks and made me completely forget I needed to close the windows against the sprinkler I'd just set.

For those interested in the technical side, these shots were taken using a Canon DS126151 and a Canon EF75-300mm Zoom Lens. Here is a chronology of shots and what I learned along the way.

First shot was a massive failure, because I tried the sports setting and the light was too low.

Like I said - massive fail.

Next, I tried using the flash and the close-up setting. My first shot was blurred because time and spiders busy weaving their webs wait for no man, woman, or camera. This is my second shot.

And this was my third shot.

They're okay, but I didn't like the way the spider looked so shiny in each shot, or the way the light reflected off its exo-skeleton. Take a look at the next shot and you can see reflections on both the forelegs and fangs. I get the impression she wasn't too happy with the flash or camera, but she kept right on weaving.

I remembered reading somewhere that you can diffuse the flash using tissue paper. Being a little short of tissue paper and time, I grabbed a tissue and gave it a go. The first shot held some promise for getting rid of the reflections.

It was difficult to keep the tissue in place, focus and keep track of a rapidly moving spider in rapidly failing light, but I kept trying and eventually took these, much clearer shots.

I'll try for more night spider shots over the coming weeks, and we'll see how they come out. Wish me luck - these little suckers are quite hard to find.

You can find out more about garden orb weavers at the following sites: