You may have noticed there have been no new paintings joining the website now for quite some time.
I had been using a “Red Head” which is a videography light that runs at 800 watts within a bulb that is slightly smaller than a standard thumb.
The light quality from those lights is very bright and also gives a more true representation of colour, I had been enjoying painting in such bright light since it feels like it really allows me to hone in the colour mixing and get the look I am after without being surprised when I look at the paintings in a different light.
Previously, I had kept on losing light bulbs; they would fizzle and die on me in harmless & unnoteworthy ways after not too much time painting under them and I figured that I had a bad batch of bulbs or the barn doors and attached grid that covers the bulb was leading to too much heat build up, so I removed the barn doors with the grid. It turns out, that was not a wise choice.
When I sat down to paint most recently, I had just squeezed out some fresh paint and was just about to get into it when, POP ! – A very loud bang.
The red head bulb exploded with such force that it left the lights reflector dented, and sent extremely hot shards of glass and gas in my direction.
I suffered 4 small burns on my neck, and had a few holes instantly burned into my shorts. A few minor cuts on my leg, but my worst injury was when I got up quickly to escape the smoke and stood on a very hot and large piece of glass which promptly became stuck to my heel and had to be pried off with my thumbnail while it was still burning me. Not fun.
Worry not, I am okay. The burn on the under side of my foot has calloused over with only a mild indentation remaining.
However, my shorts will never be the same ! 🙂
Needless to say, I will not be painting under Red Head lights any longer. I would very much like to get a suitably powered LED videography light, a 200w Bi-coloured LED videography light would be great – that would probably be a little brighter than I would need, but I would rather have headroom than need to run two lights.
Shipping a light from the US, in this range could cost $400, so its a little out of reach at the moment, but soon I will return to the easel and attempt to paint under a pair of consumer grade light bulbs that reportedly produce an equivalent of 100w incandescent. A preliminary check seems like they will not be suitable to paint under, but I can only but try.
I guess it would not be art unless I had to suffer a little more than I would like.
Check back soon to see how I did.