Shirley Dawson's Friends

View All

Shirley Dawson's Discussions

Hi there!

I'm Shirley Dawson from central Arkansas. Found this site after purchasing some of Richards DVD lessons. I'm loving them btw. I'm a retired civil servant (worked at FDA for 33 years) then opened a…Continue

Started Apr 17, 2011

View All

Gifts Received

Shirley Dawson has not received any gifts yet

Give a Gift

Shirley Dawson's Page

Profile Information

How would you categorize your painting style?: relistic and impressionistic

Which medium do you prefer? eg. oils, acrylics, etc.: acrylics

Are you a full time artist?: Part Time

Who are your favourite 2 artists?: William Turner
John Singer Sargent

Do you have any goals for your painting?: Yes, I wish to improve my skills in traditional media to the point that my work is pleasing and sellable.

What's your website address? (If any): http://www.shirleydawson.com

Shirley Dawson's Photos

Comment Wall (2 comments)

You need to be a member of The Complete Artist to add comments!

Join The Complete Artist

At 0:55 on April 18, 2011, Shirley Dawson said…: Roena, thanks for your comment. I looked at your painting - pretty cool! If I was going to try to reproduce that lighting in the studio. I would use a dark background and the main light source to camera right and slightly behind the subject (notice the shadow from the nose indicates the light is coming from a little behind the subject, not too low so as not to get ghoul lighting on the face. I would also try a reflector or a 2nd light source to open up the right side of his face as shown in the painting. I would have to experiment with the camera settings and power of the lights. For myself I would also slightly light the back and left front of his clothing so I could have some pixels left to push around when painting his clothing, even if I painted them very dark.

Also, you can achieve some of those shadows while preparing your photo afterwards in Photoshop and painting it. (I use Corel Painter V11 to do most of my digital painting).

At 22:11 on April 17, 2011, Roena King said…: Hi Shirley, Welcome to the site. I read your intruduce yourself. Your gallery is really pretty as I looked at all your paintings too. It is amazing what you can do with digital photos these days. You mentioned you did professional photography and a Canon camera. // I have a Canon Rebel XS with a 55-250mm lense and a 18-55mm lens. Could you please go to my gallery and look at this painting ... http://thecompleteartist.ning.com/photo/cowboy-1?context=user . I painted that years ago from a photo I found in a book. I would love to do more with that idea for the lighting. Can you suggest any camera settings that might point me in the right direction to achieve that effect? I have messed with some things in Photoshop Elements 7 and got a little close to that effect using a regular "daytime" photo but it just was not the same. So If I had a photo that started out leaning toward that effect, then perhaps I could finish altering it in Photoshop. Thanks for taking the time to look and if the process of what I might try is within the scope of this e-mail method of communication, thanks for trying to explain what I might try. Ro