"Gurty" the White Cow

 

"Gurty" (pastel, 6x6 inches) bid or buy

Here's a quick high quality GIF for you, and guess what? I made it myself! My son showed me how. There's a program that only works on Mac or Linux... well, I won't bore you. But I'll probably have to get my son to show me again the next few times too. (PS: If this GIF doesn't play for you, click to watch it here!)

 

Gurty is short for "Yogurt" because doesn't she look like vanilla? Today's your lucky day too because I finished painting Gurty in my Virtual Open Studio Episode 118, Part 2, which I decided to make public for everyone to watch! The 30-minute episode picks up early on in the pastel process, as I had started Gurty elsewhere, but I did manage to find good enough progress pics to put this GIF together. I hope you enjoy it! (And the video too!)

Mother's Day Rose

 

"Mother's Day Rose" (pastel, 8x6 inches) bid or buy

Happy Mother's Day! Here's a fresh rose (painting, that is) for you on this lovely day!
Also to be my painting #3 of my 21-in-31 goal for May!
See a quick GIF here!

Day 24 of 28: "Moo Mime"

 

Day 24 of 28: "Moo Mime" (formerly Moomime) pastel, 6x6 inches. bid or buy

Moomime was a cute little white face calf I painted years ago, and it never sold. Personally I suspect it was because of the atypical off-centeredness, with the left ear cropped. Also, on further study, the values were not quite right in the face. So it's been hanging in my studio waiting for me to fix it. I needed a quick painting right before heading out to my Rockport workshop, so I decided to tackle this.

I decided what she needed was a back-tilt to that ear to get it away from the frame edge, some better shadow values in the face, and maybe a few other tweaks.
So I searched my photo files for some dark tilted ears on cows, and used a few to reference how Moomime's ear might look in that position. I also thinned her down a bit, and of course corrected the face shadow values. Then I had fun adding some colors not seen in the photo!

To celebrate her rebirth, I've slightly edited her name to "Moo Mime" (I always thought her face looked like mime makeup 🙂)

Enjoy these progress pics showing how I gave Moo Mime a makeover!

And, see a few of the original, pre-makeover progress pics here.

Day 23 of 28: "Lovey Dove"

 

Day 23 of 28: "Lovey Dove" (pastel, 6x6 inches) bid or buy

The star of my February Paint-Along! I think we had a record number of participants actually painting along. Here's a collage of the doves that were sent to me afterwards... what a beautiful bevy of birds!
To see what paint-along I've got coming next, visit ritakirkman.com/workshops!

See a quick GIF here!

Day 22 of 28: "Scaredy Bird"

 

Day 22 of 28: "Scaredy Bird" (pastel, 8x6 inches) bid or buy

Here's another little house wren (maybe the same one as "Little Wren in Sunlight" from Day 17) running along the sidewalk. Birds are so funny on their feet.
I will have this one, and most of my other available little dailies, with me at my Rockport TX workshop this week, for my usual "show and sell" to the students. So be forewarned, the auctions may be ended without notice if there are no bids!

See a quick speed video here!

Day 20 of 28: "Murdoch"

 

Day 20 of 28: "Murdoch" (pastel, 6x6 inches) bid or buy

Another handsome Black Baldy, this one in early morning light. Yum, that little sliver of light on his face was my favorite part!

See a quick speed video here!

Day 18 of 28: "Mugsy"

 

Day 18 of 28: "Mugsy" (pastel, 6x6 inches) bid or buy

Whenever I get back into cow-painting mode, I always love the whiteface cows (or Black Baldies as they're sometimes called) best. They're a mix of Hereford and Angus, and they just seem to have the most expressive faces!

See a quick montage here!

Day 17 of 28: "Little Wren in Sunlight"

 

"Little Wren in Sunlight" (pastel, 6x6 inches) bid or buy

Someone asked me to paint more birds on wires, and while I was looking through my bird photos I found some cute little wrens on sidewalks, so I added this one to my batch!

Click here to see a quick speed video of this painting's process!

Day 16 of 28: "Harkin"

 

"Harkin" (pastel, 6x6 inches) bid or buy

I named this young Red Angus calf Harkin, which means "red" in Gaelic. I'm really having to dig deep for titles these days!

Enjoy this quick GIF!

Day 15 of 28: "Nio"

 

Day 15 of 28: "Nio" (pastel, 6x6 inches) bid or buy

Nio is a young Pygmy goat. I have a gazillion pics of his parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and friends belonging to a friend of mine. They're so much fun to visit in the springtime. All that silly jumping and bleating.

See progress pics here!

Day 14 of 28: "Cora"

 

Day 14 of 28: "Cora" (pastel, 6x6 inches) bid or buy

I've decided I'm not tired of cows yet 🙂. Herefords have such lovely colors!

Enjoy these progress pics!

Day 13 of 28: "Gerty"

Day 13 of 28: "Gerty" (pastel, 6x6 inches) bid or buy

Gerty is the star of my Zoom demo this morning for the Pastel Society of Central Florida. They wanted to see a sheep, so I found this lovely sunlit angle on this ewe's face in my "good sheep" image folder.

I'll be sending the full-length demo video to the PSCF, and maybe they'll put it on their website. If they share it anywhere I'll be sure to post a link! 

Meanwhile, enjoy this quick GIF of the main progress points of the painting. 

I actually got as far as the 5th image in the morning demo, but I wasn't satisfied with the overall darkness of the painting, nor the disproportionate variance in the shadow values on the sheep. So afterwards, I took a good look and decided it was mostly the background that was too dark. So I wiped it all out, used gesso to lighten parts, and re-primed in gold. It took some experimentation (and more tweaks on the face!) before I was satisfied.

Day 12 of 28: "Tulips and Pot"

 

Day 12 of 28: "Tulips and Pot" (pastel over watercolor, 6x6 inches) bid or buy here

This was my replacement for missing out of recording "Spring Garden 2" from Tuesday's VOS. It's painted the same way, with a watercolor underpainting on Arches w/c paper.
The real time creation of this little landscape will be available to Patrons on my Patreon page soon, but meanwhile everyone can enjoy this little speed video!

Day 11 of 28: "A Sunny Walk"

 

"A Sunny Walk" (5x5, pastel over watercolor on UArt) bid or buy

This little painting will be the feature of my VOS video Episode 90, Part 2. Part 1 is another little garden landscape that I painted to replace the actual VOS Episode 90 (in which I painted "Spring Garden 2") which, due to technical difficulties, did not actually get recorded!

So I had some fun with watercolor underpainting for a couple days. I really like this image. I clearly remember taking the reference photo on a walk in some gardens somewhere. The happy daisies shooting up and casting long shadows... All around me were beautiful sights, but sometimes you just have to look where you're walking or you might miss something sweet!

Enjoy these progress pics!

Day 10 of 28: "Spring Garden 2"

Day 10 of 28: "Spring Garden 2" (pastel over watercolor, 6x6 inches)

This was a re-paint of a sold painting from 2012 that a client fell in love with. The original of this little landscape was one small part of a photo reference that I had posted way back in 2012 on DailyPaintworks as "The Cropping Challenge". Read all about my adventures with this challenge and the other paintings I did, here!

Little Brown Pig - Day 21 of 21-in-31

"Little Brown Pig" (pastel, 6x6 inches)
Yay! I did 21-paintings-in-31-days of August! That was a lot easier than 31 paintings for sure. In fact, I actually did a little bit more but haven't posted everything. There were two pencil portraits of young sisters half-way through the month, and I still have the landscape demo from the workshop to post.
Maybe I can keep up the momentum and post 20-in-30 for September...
Maybe...

See a quick GIF of this little pig here!

 On auction for one week only at Dailypaintworks!

Day 30 of 30 - Coy

 

Day 30 of 30 paintings in June - "Coy" (pastel, 6x6 inches)
DONE!! Whoohoo!
I'm finishing up my month of paintings with this flirty love dove. I painted her a few years ago and wanted to paint her again. I always loved the blue shadows on white.

Coming up soon, July 3 and 4, spend your holiday weekend at the #rockportartfest hosted by @rockportartcenter and catch some great art, including "Coy"!

See a GIF of "Coy"'s painting process here!

$305, price includes frame and US shipping.

 

---------------

And in case you missed this message earlier...
 
The Feedburner team announced that their email subscription service will be discontinued in July 2021. As a result, Blogger’s email subscription widget, also known as FollowByEmail, will be turned off. Specifically, the email subscription system will no longer work and subscribers to Google blogs will no longer receive email updates.
 
SO! If you're receiving this post via email, I thank you for your subscription, but you will no longer be getting these delivered to you from my Google Blog after this month.  
 
But don't despair! Here are two ways you can still get my (almost) Daily Paintings in your inbox!
 
#1 - Sign up for my website's New Art Alerts. I basically have been pasting the same info into my website art posts as I do here, so you won't be missing a thing. CLICK HERE to get my New Art Alerts from my website at RitaKirkman.com.
 
#2 - Follow my public Patreon Posts. Sure, Patreon is a subscription-based creative support platform, but you don't have to pay anything for my public posts, and just about all of my new work gets posted on my Patreon page, usually with cool little extras like progress pics or short speed videos! CLICK HERE to go to my Patreon Page and right below the membership levels, next to a button that says "share" is a button that says "follow". It's that easy! (Browse around my other free posts while you're in there..)
 
Thanks so much for liking my work and following my blog. Here's to many more years of following my Website or my Patreon, and to many more years of creating!

Day 25 of 30 - Blackbird

Day 25 of 30 paintings in June - "Blackbird" (pastel, 6x6 inches)

I decided to paint this one directly on a gray board without a terracotta underpainting. I think it suits the values of this bird well.

See a speed video of this painting's process here!

See this piece and others like it at the #rockportartfest hosted by @rockportartcenter located right on the beautiful coast of Texas!

$305, price includes frame and US shipping.

Day 22 of 30 - Golden Tamarin

 

Day 22 of 30 paintings in June - "Golden Tamarin" (pastel, 5x5 inches) sold

I was in the mood for something different.

This was one of the triple-demo in my weekend online workshop. This painting would have been with me at the #rockportartfest hosted by @rockportartcenter this 4th of July weekend except it's already sold! Come see all the other new art I'll have there!

See a GIF of Golden Tamarin's painting process here!

---------------

And in case you missed this message earlier...
 
The Feedburner team announced that their email subscription service will be discontinued in July 2021. As a result, Blogger’s email subscription widget, also known as FollowByEmail, will be turned off. Specifically, the email subscription system will no longer work and subscribers to Google blogs will no longer receive email updates.
 
SO! If you're receiving this post via email, I thank you for your subscription, but you will no longer be getting these delivered to you from my Google Blog after this month.  
 
But don't despair! Here are two ways you can still get my (almost) Daily Paintings in your inbox!
 
#1 - Sign up for my website's New Art Alerts. I basically have been pasting the same info into my website art posts as I do here, so you won't be missing a thing. CLICK HERE to get my New Art Alerts from my website at RitaKirkman.com.
 
#2 - Follow my public Patreon Posts. Sure, Patreon is a subscription-based creative support platform, but you don't have to pay anything for my public posts, and just about all of my new work gets posted on my Patreon page, usually with cool little extras like progress pics or short speed videos! CLICK HERE to go to my Patreon Page and right below the membership levels, next to a button that says "share" is a button that says "follow". It's that easy! (Browse around my other free posts while you're in there..)
 
Thanks so much for liking my work and following my blog. Here's to many more years of following my Website or my Patreon, and to many more years of creating!

Day 21 of 30 - Park Trail #54

 

Day 21 of 30 paintings in June - "Park Trail #54" (pastel, 6x6 inches)

This was one of my triple-demo in my recent online workshop. I underpainted this at the same time as the Pug and another animal (to be posted tomorrow) and pasteled them in a row later that day.

See some progress pictures here!

See this piece and others like it at the #rockportartfest hosted by @rockportartcenter located right on the beautiful coast of Texas!

$300 includes frame and US shipping

---------------

And in case you missed this message earlier...
 
The Feedburner team announced that their email subscription service will be discontinued in July 2021. As a result, Blogger’s email subscription widget, also known as FollowByEmail, will be turned off. Specifically, the email subscription system will no longer work and subscribers to Google blogs will no longer receive email updates.
 
SO! If you're receiving this post via email, I thank you for your subscription, but you will no longer be getting these delivered to you from my Google Blog after this month.  
 
But don't despair! Here are two ways you can still get my (almost) Daily Paintings in your inbox!
 
#1 - Sign up for my website's New Art Alerts. I basically have been pasting the same info into my website art posts as I do here, so you won't be missing a thing. CLICK HERE to get my New Art Alerts from my website at RitaKirkman.com.
 
#2 - Follow my public Patreon Posts. Sure, Patreon is a subscription-based creative support platform, but you don't have to pay anything for my public posts, and just about all of my new work gets posted on my Patreon page, usually with cool little extras like progress pics or short speed videos! CLICK HERE to go to my Patreon Page and right below the membership levels, next to a button that says "share" is a button that says "follow". It's that easy! (Browse around my other free posts while you're in there..)
 
Thanks so much for liking my work and following my blog. Here's to many more years of following my Website or my Patreon, and to many more years of creating!