A difficult colourway to capture

Every now and then I paint a scarf that is predominately pastel colours. This colourway of pastel greens and pastel blues is one such example.

Simple beginning – drawing out the design with resist.

Now, I know that responding to my expressive impulse to switch from my more usual strong colour palette to pastels, will, eventually, lead to frustration.

No problems achieving an accurate reproduction of the fuchsia pink and the grass green.

In my usual way I have kept a photographic record of the creative process, but it has turned out to be more tricky this time. As I have blogged in the past, light is everything and some colours and some colour combinations are strangely difficult to photograph accurately.

Adding some background blue.
(Little did I know when I took this photo it would be the most accurate visual record of the pale blue.)

This has been distinctly noticeable with this specific pastel blue background. The ambient light was different on every occasion I photographed the progression of my work. Sometimes I had to take pictures in electric light which significantly changed the pastel blue. Each time I adjusted the white balance on my camera scrolling through the additional 17 settings (yes, that’s 17 slightly different versions) trying to find the closest to the reality in front of my eyes. My nearest choice, though not a perfect match, was always miles off from the first shot the camera offered on the automatic white balance setting.

Natural light – photograph taken during a grey cloud moment resulting in the blue looking grey.

Even using my powerful daylight bulb capturing this pale blue has been . . . well, virtually impossible.

Finished and steamed. Photographed in cloudy daylight, daylight bulb light, in sunny daylight, and finally in standard electric light (from top left clockwise).

Now you can see, above, the blue varies from a greeny blue, to a grey blue to an almost actual, full grey. As I have been typing I decided to have another go. I retrieved the scarf from my stock and tried again, but no joy (image below). As it turns out the most accurate representation had already been taken and it was the photo ‘Adding some background blue’.