Thanks for your interest in my work! May I ask where you saw it!?
My website is www.amanosamarpan.com
If you like I can send you a card-print of the work, Milkedmaid from the After Vermeer competition, since I still have dozens left from the 100 the OCA printed for me. Let me know your address.
I have looked at your website ... always like to see work by artists.
I wonder though if you realise my work is actually a photograph rather than a painting?
One of the other entrants to the After Vermeer competition remarked that she could have easily done a photograph herself rather than go the trouble of making a painting. I did not reply to her directly but pointed out that I did spend a lot of time making this image even if it only took 1/15'th of a second to take.
The photographic session took less than an hour although it took longer to set up and find a suitable place. What actually took a lot of time, several hours in fact, was working over the image in Photoshop. Removing unwanted objects such as shelves in the background was the easier part, creating the right contrast and appropriate colours was not so easy as one never quite knows what a photograph might look like on someone else's screen or when printed.
I expect you know that there is little doubt that Vermeer used a camera lucida. For some artists, it is hard to accept the fact that some of the Great Masters used this device, an approach enlarged upon in David Hockney's book Secret Knowledge.
If you want to know more about the technical procedure I used in Photoshop, I could send you a screen grab of the layers from a Photoshop file. I do not have a set method though I do usually start with basic optimisation which means balancing contrast , brightness and colours. After this, it is a matter of changing the image to meet one's vision. For instance, the carton of orange juice was moved a few inches so that it stood in a more fitting place while the text on the carton was also changed!
I do not consider my work art, it is merely photography. If you do not like my photography that is fine, you do not have to look at it. However, you have and I am flattered that a tutor of art at the OCA should consider my work worthy of consideration.
With Thanks
Amano
