Wildflower Field #37 - And an Important Announcement!

 "Wildflower Field #37" (pastel on hand-prepared board, 5x5 inches) buy here

This painting was the third (and my favorite) of three paintings in my last Paint-Along, "Wildflower Interpretations," where we tried out a field of wildflowers on various surfaces, and it was interesting to see how the surfaces affected the look of the paintings.

Watch a short speed video of this one on my Patreon page!

 

Now for an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

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 next 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 (like the one linked above!) 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!

 

Hay! It's What's For Lunch.

 

"Hay! It's What's For Lunch." (pastel, 36x36 inches) $6200 

I'd been sold out of large paintings for more than a year. I'm so thankful my friend and Director of the ARTS for Rural Texas invited me to have a solo exhibition this spring. With only three months to prepare, it was the exact kick in the butt I needed after the sluggishness of 2020.

This long overdue new Longhorn painting was years in the making! Started as a partial underpainting demo at a Large Project Workshop in Kansas three summers ago, I was finally motivated to finish it.

Watch a quick little still progression video HERE!

This painting will be my centerpiece for my Solo Exhibition, Kindred Spirits, at the ARTS for Rural Texas in Fayetteville, March 27 - May 29, 2021. Opening Reception March 27, 5-7pm.

 

"Morning's Kiss" (with reference photos and video!)

 

 

"Morning's Kiss" (pastel, 18x24 inches) $1750. Now available at Art Connections Gallery. 

I caught the reference photo of this mama and baby longhorn on one of my trips out to Round Top Texas to the Gallery there (sadly, now closed.) I'm always excited to find beautiful animals showing affection with one another. 

 

 original reference photo

 

 edited reference photo

 

This pastel painting has been featured in a couple of my Virtual Open Studio days. All in all, this painting took about 13-15 hours from start to finish. 

 

Here is a short 8 minute compilation video showing a choice selection of bits from the start to finish process of this painting:

 

You can watch almost the entire process through this series of videos on my Patreon page (the real-time videos, with narration and live Q&A, available to my Patreon subscribers at the Bunny Buddies and Moo-tastic Muses levels.)

The Underpainting, first part:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/early-of-baby-39533044 (speed demo - free) 

The Underpainting, second part: https://www.patreon.com/posts/39459487  

The Pastel, part 1:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/virtual-open-3-1-39556181 

The Pastel, part 2: https://www.patreon.com/posts/39564539

The Pastel Finish: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mornings-kiss-40668895 (speed demo - free)

Day 31 - West Texas #5

"West Texas #5" (pastel, 5x7 inches)

Day 31 of my 31-in-31 in January 2020! YAY, I did it!!

And I did manage to find one last old board that already had a brushed-off old painting on it. This was a 5x7 Ampersand Pastelbord, and I brought up the values with some Art Spectrum off-white pigment ink, which was amazingly opaque. Fun to work with and giving me all kinds of ideas!

 These two colors in the pots above are two of the combos of toned pumice primers that I've been working with. The gold color is a mix of some of the Art Spectrum pigmented ink yellows and gold ochre mixed into the Art Spectrum clear multimedia & pastel primer (which contains pumice.)
The blue is some Golden brand fluid acrylic ultramarine mixed with the Golden brand fine pumice gel.
I also used a bit of Art Spectrum's terra cotta multimedia & pastel primer, thinned down in some of their clear primer. (Yes... the three primaries, all you need! :)

Then, for the pastel...

Thanks for watching! Please share!

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Waffles

"Waffles" (pastel, 6x6 inches) $200 unframed for a limited time.

Waffles is from a reversed image of the recent "Russell," which sold over the weekend. Sometimes the cute little calves go so fast I just have to repeat myself!

Waffles and the others of this week's practice batch will be with me at my IAPS pastel workshop on Wednesday, June 5.

My practice batch of underpaintings this week

You're Invited! - Boerne Parade of Artists

Join us in Boerne Texas this weekend, April 13 & 14 for the 23rd Annual Boerne Parade of Artists. Enjoy an ARTful weekend! Click the image for a larger view, and save the map to print for your convenience.
Looking forward to seeing you there!

Rita
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A Future Promise

"A Future Promise" (pastel, 36x46 inches) $6700

Here it is, the showstopper I've been working on all week. These two are mother and daughter, and belong to a good friend who is fortunate to have the most beautiful Longhorns I've ever met! And unbelievably, I caught this pair posed just like this for my photo! They were fated to be painted.

A Future Promise will be at the Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival, this weekend April 18-22. Find me on Main in booth #518. Hope to see you there!

Here are just a few progress shots:

I decided that mama, who's numerous faint spots I had calmed down in the painting, needed a few more prominent spots to balance her daughter's.

Thanks for watching! Please share!

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Pastel Workshop in Rockport TX - Spaces Still Available!

"Pastel in Miniature"

September 8-10, 2016

at the Rockport Center for the Arts in Rockport, TX

Celebrate the End of Summer with an Art Workshop!

My classic Pastel Workshop focuses on painting small and often to rapidly improve your skills and expand your knowledge. Grow your grasp of light, values, color and composition in a relaxed and fun atmosphere!

For Beginner to Advanced. 

More information at www.rockportartcenter.com/workshops

To Register Contact Karen Marie Ernst, (361) 729-5519, ext. 105, or karen@rockportartcenter.com

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Lilbit

"Lilbit"  (pastel, 7x5 inches)  $250 framed

"Lilbit" is short for "little bitty horns."

This one will be with me at the Rockport Art Festival, next weekend July 2-3, 2016. Come on by if you're in the area!

Progress shots of Lilbit:

Thanks for watching! Please share!

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Dawn of a Texan Dynasty

"Dawn of a Texan Dynasty"  (pastel, 36x36 inches)  sold

I actually finished this one 10 days ago, but hadn't taken a good photo of it when it was done. So I had to get the scans put together before I had an image I could post. I scan all my artwork before it's framed, so I can have a good 300dpi image file. Since my scanner is just an ordinary desktop size... yea. You get the picture. This one was about 25-30 sections to be connected up in Photoshop. I have a feeling there might be some program that could do that for me, but who has time to research that?? I'm too busy on my computer, uh, I mean PAINTING! I'm too busy painting. Yea. (Lol)

To continue the techie aspect of this post, I thought I'd show you my compositional thought process. This one was composed from 3 photos - the three cows:

They were all from the same herd on the same day (the same "photo shoot" I call it) so that the light matched. I remember these were on my way up to my workshop in Kansas last spring, somewhere in the north Texas panhandle.

I had a lot more pics from this herd, but as I played with the composition, these three settled to the fore. I also found a webpage online by a guy who talked about composing in a square and using mathematical formulas and circles very similar to how the golden rectangle uses 1.618 and the spiral to create the aesthetic ideal.

After spending more than an hour last night looking for that webpage because I had neglected to bookmark it, I looked again this morning with different keywords and found it! It's a mathematical essay by artist Janusz Kapusta, called The Square, the Circle and the Golden Proportion
A New Class of Geometrical Constructions. You can see it here:

https://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2000/bridges2000-247.pdf

 
Here's one of his square design diagrams overlaying my photo composition:

I did end up tweaking the positions just a bit more for the final painting.

"Dawn of a Texan Dynasty" will be my other largest painting at my show Beauty of the Beast at the Rockport Center for the Arts in Rockport, TX. Reception is this is Saturday, May 16 at 4:30.

Thanks, and please share!

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