Screech Owl

 "Screech Owl" (pastel, 8x6 inches) bid or buy

Here's the star of Saturday's Paint-Along - the Screech Owl! This one's a little different... Instead of my usual pastel primer underpainting, I used some UArt paper  that had some pastel washed in with alcohol, something I had left over from someone else's workshop months ago. I figured I'd put it to use! So instead of building an acrylic-based underpainting, I basically started with a value drawing of the owl using a black Rembrandt pastel.

 See a quick speed video here!

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!

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!

Fiesta Llama - Day 20 of 21-in-31

 

"Fiesta Llama" (pastel, 12x6 inches)

This llama has very dark fur, but in the sunlight somehow it all got very colorful. I guess that happens sometimes with my paintings.

See progress pictures here!

On auction for one week only at Dailypaintworks!

Chickiepoo - Day 15 of 21-in-31

 

"Chickiepoo" (pastel, 4x4 inches) sold

This is the second painting from my triple demo in my weekend workshop, the third one not being completed yet. 

Click here to watch a quick speed video of "Chickiepoo"'s painting process.

Here's a photo one of my participants took of me painting!

Gothart - Day 5 of 21-in-31

 

"Gothart" (pastel, 8x10 inches) bid or buy here

This was one of the underpaintings I had in my last batch. I hadn't finished a painting in a couple days; I've been working hard on more underpaintings for several commissions. This face has been calling to me because I really was pleased with the freshness of the underpainting and I thought I might be able to get the pasteling done fairly quickly too... so I jumped right on it after completing the commissions' underpaintings. It wasn't quite as quick as I'd hoped, but I'm happy with the result anyway.

BTW, here's a peek at most of the underpaintings I've got going now.... The dogs and horse and dove are commissions:

I'll probably be pasteling one of these at Monday's Virtual Open Studio, Aug 9. If you'd like to join us you can register on my site here!

And visit this page to see some progress pics of Gothart the goat!

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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.  
 
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Day 8 of 30 - Backyard Baby

Day 8 of 30 paintings in June - "Backyard Baby" (pastel, 7x5 inches) bid or buy here for a limited time

This sweet fox lives in our back yard. He usually only comes out at night, but I managed to get a few pics one evening when the sun was just setting. He was just a youngster then. My husband has seen him recently and says he's much bigger now. 

The photo I took was much cooler in tone, but the underpainting colors I use helped create a warmer look!

See the reference photo and a little speed video of this baby here!

Don Kiefer

“Don Kiefer” (pastel, 12x6 inches) $400 framed

I realized my inventory was low on donkeys, so here’s another one. Don Kiefer will be with me at the Midland TX SeptemberFest next weekend, Sept 7-9, 2018.
Click here for festival info and tickets! Hope to see you there!

See progress shots below:

Thanks for reading! Please share!

Angel

“Angel” (pastel, 10x8 inches) $350 unframed for a limited time, or $430 framed.

My opening demo from last weekend’s workshop in Virginia. I had originally planned this little heifer as a 4x6, but decided to draw her larger for better visibility in the classroom.
During her painting process, I found myself making the shadowed side of her face too light for my chosen background, because of the dark the background in the photo making that shadow look far brighter. So I wiped that off on Sunday and tweaked the contrasts to better suit the lighter background.

See progress shots below:

Here, the blue-ish shadowed side of the face had gotten too light, and was blending in to the background...  a face is not usually where one would like to have a “lost edge”!

So, my final tweaks involved wiping off the too-light blues and keeping them slightly darker when re-painting. Combined with some subtle lightening of the background blues...  Voila!

Tomorrow starts my last workshop of this summer trip, at Painted Views Ranch in Florence TX. So the flow of new paintings will continue for the next few days! Monday I’ll be home and back to the grind of normal life...

Blue Boy

“Blue Boy” (pastel over acrylic/pumice primers, 8x8 inches) $300 unframed for a limited time, or $375 framed.

This plump Angus bull was my final animal demo in Greensboro last week. I’ve been trying to demo at least one painting in each new workshop that will demonstrate my new blue primer color in my under-painting. I’m ready finding it exciting, but it needs a definite “blue-ness” to the animal for best impact. This bull is mostly the under-painting! ...Which I guess would make him technically a mixed-media rather than pastel...
But the terra cotta primer and the ultramarine layer up so well together!

For a pretty good description of this process with the blue, read my post for “Blue Bunny”!

The only difference with this bull was that I forgot to put some terra cotta before the blue and layered it in between instead... but got the nice deep dark effect I was hoping for anyway!

See progress shots below:

 This is what the finished under-painting looked like! Not much more to do!

Blue Bill

 “Blue Bill” (pastel, 12x6 inches) sold

This was the third in my triple demo from my workshop in Woodstock VA this weekend. I didn’t quite have enough time to finish him on Saturday so I made him my first demo on Sunday morning.

The workshop went went very well; lots of raw talent and various styles among the students!

I’m heading back to Texas today; I’ll get to Florence TX by Thursday for my last workshop of the trip, at Painted Views Ranch next weekend, August 3-5.

There are still a few spaces left in that one... to register contact Kirk at paintedviewsranch@gmail.com, and visit my workshop page (https://ritakirkman.com/page/14193/workshops-and-shows) for more info!

Meanwhile, here are a few progress shots of Blue Bill:

Thanks for reading! Please share!

Oscar

“Oscar” (pastel, 8x6 inches) sold

Oscar was a demo from my Gastonia workshop last weekend, that just sold to a student today. He was my demonstration of the new blue color that I’ve been sometimes adding to my under-paintings. Since “Blue Bunny” from earlier in the month, I’ve been excited about this ultramarine blue in some of the animal paintings that have any kind of blue-ish lights in dark fur!

I only caught three progress shots of Oscar, but you can see some great shots of Blue Bunny on this blog post!

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Lolly

“Lolly” (pastel, 10x8 inches) $350 unframed for a limited time, $430 framed.

This one was my opening demo in my Gastonia workshop over the weekend. The workshop was a lot of fun and everyone enjoyed it!

See pictures from the workshop and progress shots below:

Thanks for reading! Please share!