I managed to get a good scan of my picture Sorrow. After I shared that one on Instagram, I got the idea for this post. Below left is from the scanner and it approximates how the picture looks indoors in artificial light. Below right is the image I posted before taken outdoors with a camera that approximates how it looks outdoors in natural light. And you do observe a change in the artwork throughout the day indoors inasmuch as the changing light outside affects the light inside. Both reproductions are accurate depending on the lighting.
Indoors the colors are darker and deeper. Note the cherry red of the clouds. But you lose some of the subtleties of detail and color, as well as the luminous glow of the glazes. (Because this is a scanner image, you can also make out a few more blemishes like underdrawing showing through and a few specks of dust -- and these are things common to art history. It is often you see underdrawings remaining visible in museum paintings (Pre-Raphaelite works are notorious for this), and dust pops up in a masterwork every now and then (I could swear I saw dust in Church's Twilight Short Arbiter 'Twixt Day and Night in person at the Newark Museum)).
The outdoor image captures the glow of the glazes making everything brighter, with subtle details of chiaroscuro and gradations being rendered more visible. Note how the blueness of the darks in the clouds is brought out. But the brightness shifts the color, which makes more of the color under the glazes more visible, which is not necessarily bad. (And you have to contend with glare and perspective issues in camera reproductions, though you often get a better understanding of the brushwork).So now you are thinking I'm just bad at reproducing my artwork. I have a reason for showing you this! Artworks produced with traditional techniques vary in appearance in different lighting throughout the day, and when viewed from different vantage points. This is why you can look up the same museum masterwork on image sharing websites and find a thousand different reproductions of the same work. You can look at the same artwork professionally photographed in different art history books, and unless both books used the same photograph you will see two different reproductions.
Artworks painted with layers and glazes and other traditional techniques indeed change in appearance with the circumstances of viewing. They are not static. And I'm not the only artist to realize this. Some people do not trouble themselves with anything beyond composition in art -- nothing matters to them but the image itself, and thus they are happy to sacrifice technique and other subtleties of art-making for the sake of getting a good image that can easily be reproduced. Hence they switch from oils to easier media to wield, or they give up on making physical art and go digital. Other people just avoid traditional glazing and do everything direct with overbearing mixes containing lots of opaque white, which makes things photograph better. And all that's fine for those artists who are into that, and they are not any the lesser for it. Such methods are certainly more expedient for the purposes of illustration.
But I'm not that type of artist. I want my paintings to have more charm and depth than just basic image. I make an effort to give my paintings better qualities than your typical inspirational poster wall decoration. My art's higher than that. I endeavor to produce an artwork that cannot be taken-in entirely with a single glance. Rather I seek to produce art that shall invite examination for years to come. And I daresay this what the masters sought before me. Of course, circumstances don't always permit us to live up to our standards all the time. But I think I've lived up to mine this time, at least.
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