Since discovering that a conservatory is a terrible place to paint still life if you want consistent light, I painted this over a few dark autumn evenings. This has forced me to setup some suitable lighting.
As most house bulbs are warm white (2700k – 4000k) they’re not suitable for painting under if you want to judge your colours properly. I already had a 5500k bulb which is supposed to be neutral white and mimic daylight. I used this to light the shadow box and another cheap bulb that was labelled ‘daylight’ to light the canvas and palette. Turns out that bulb was too cool with a bluish tint, and nowhere near bright enough, which led to a frustrating few evenings of incorrect colours.
Eventually I bought a 5500k CFL studio bulb which was bright enough and scattered the light enough to solve the problem. I then completely reworked the painting!
I think it’s ended up a bit overworked, but it’s good to have a nice stable studio setup to paint in now it’s getting dark so early. I’ll do a post soon showing the bulbs I’ve used and a few tricks I’ve learned along the way.
