See a quick speed video here!
Back to some of my last underpainting batch now, heading into the final paintings of my month's goal!
This was from a pic of Mewler as a kitten, sitting on my lap in the morning. First thing in the morning (before the house has warmed back up to summertime temps) is the only time he's a snuggly lap cat.
I had fun painting all these textures! I hope you enjoy this quick video of the pasteling. I was able to leave a considerable amount of underpainting showing... Mewler's coloring was a good warm match for the gold and terra cotta colors.
"Snowy Bun" (pastel 8x6 inches)
Bid or buy for a limited time on DailyPaintworks
The Fremont Art Association had me demo for them on Wednesday. They like my cute fuzzy animals so I did this cute fuzzy bunny for them!
Enjoy these progress pics from the video:
Yay! My "Little Fish" painting has been accepted as one of the 100 creative works to be "caught" at the famous VIP "Art Dash" Party on April 8, the night before The Woodlands Waterway Art Festival (just north of Houston, TX.) Get your tickets here!
This FUN fundraiser benefits The Woodlands Arts Council Student Art Scholarship program. Afterwards, enjoy the festival (April 9&10) and find me in booth 404 near the Watercolor Terrace!
See a quick GIF here!
"Little Glass Carafe" (pastel, 6x4 inches) click here to bid or buy
This is one of my little daily paintings from earlier. I felt like something different that week.
Normally, I don't believe in doing still life from photos, but a friend of mine in Frederickburg has a wonderful collection of THINGS, that the last time I was there I took tons of pics of bunches of her stuff, in the light of a lamp.
Here are a few progress pics:
"Monke" (pastel, 6x6 inches) On auction for one week only at DailyPaintworks.
This would have been the third painting in my workshop triple-demo, if I had finished it then. I finished it today instead. I'm not quite sure what kind of monkey this is, but my son and I think he looks kinda like a monk (in a homespun cowled hood) so we're calling him Monke.
Watch a quick GIF here!
I can't believe I really did it; 30 paintings in 30 days. My usual month in past years had been November because it's otherwise fairly slow. I really wasn't ready in June but I had missed November last year (I missed a lot of things last year, lol) and I was really eager to do a month of paintings. Now July is going to be full of everything I couldn't get done in June... commissions, paperwork, groceries... but I've proven to myself that it can be done even when I think I'm too busy. It's a great feeling of accomplishment to look back on the month and see all the paintings. And several of them have also sold, so there's that too!
It's HARD to be a true Daily Painter (completing and posting a new painting every day) so it's become more popular to do it one month at a time. It's a lot easier to accomplish 30 days in a row than 365+ days! I highly recommend a Daily Painting practice for anyone wanting to improve their painting skills and work habits. I also find that Daily Painting and Working Small are inevitably connected, so I want to share this blog post on Why to Paint Small. It might help inspire you to greater smaller daily paintings!
Now I'll have a full booth at the #rockportartfest hosted by @rockportartcenter this weekend, and hopefully a nice couple days to kick back and relax a bit.
This poster has not been ordered yet, but I'll take pre-orders to see how many I should get. It will be 16x20, $25 includes US shipping. Let me know if you'd like one!
Day 2 of my 30-in-30 paintings for June! I did have this one underpainted already, but that's ok. I'm catching up with a few "leftover" paintings that are laying around my studio before starting in on a new batch of underpaintings ... maybe I'll do underpaintings for my next Virtual Open Studio day on Friday...
See some progress pics of this bunny HERE!
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And in case you missed this message earlier, I need to tell you something!
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.
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#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
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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
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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!
This standing bunny was the star of my Virtual Open Studio on Tuesday this week. I had just got my second Covid vaccine and was feeling a bit slow, so instead of working on one of my overdue commissions I took it easy and had my VOS attendees pick which warm fuzzy underpainting to pastel!
I just finished a GIF of Smoky Bun's entire painting process... see it here!
"Smoky Bun" (pastel, 12x6 inches) will be at the Carriage House Gallery this Saturday for the Boerne Art Waddle. I might make an online buy link if he doesn't sell there.
I wanted to title this in my "Warm Fuzzy" series, but... hmmm...
He's still cute! Painted much larger than life, this baby was about 2 inches long! I caught some photos of this baby at a zoo on my travels a couple years ago. I had a lot of fun painting the strange color temperatures of the aquarium lighting.
This little turtle was pasteled last week in my Virtual Open Studio, and underpainted last month. You can see the full-length video of the pastel process here on my Patreon page (with a subscription.)
"Baby Sea Turtle" will be listed among my paintings available at the Online Woodlands Waterway Art Festival next month. They're doing a really good job of setting up an online gallery and virtual experiences for artists and collectors. I'm still getting my artwork organized and uploaded to the system.
Here are some progress pics from the underpainting and the pastel video:
I've painted this pretty miniature horse for a charity fundraiser
initiated by my friend Lisa Rico. Proceeds benefit the rural farms and
communities ravaged by the recent fires in her California area. 100% of
the (unframed) selling price will be donated to the Travis Credit Union Foundation - Fire Relief Fund to support those affected
communities.
I painted this fat mama cow from another reference pic several years ago as a 5x7.
Sometimes it's nice to go through my old photo files to see what other images can be used in a new painting.
I painted La Moomba at a one of my Virtual Open Studio days last week, and have posted the full length demo video on my Patreon Page here (for my Bunny Buddies and Moo-tastic Muses!) You might want to consider subscribing if you love watching informative demo videos; you can find this one and many more like it among my Patreon posts.
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"T is for Tiger" (pastel, 12x12)
Among the few paintings I picked up from a gallery last month, this is one of my favorites from my Alphabet Series. I started the series a few years back to get myself out of a painting slump. It worked, as the series is still not complete!
I was really happy with the looseness I was able to achieve with this tiger. I really don't know why he hasn't sold yet, when the Lion and the Meerkat and the Dolphin and the Hippo and many others (even the Quail!) all sold pretty quickly. But that's to my benefit now, because I can take this Tiger to The Woodlands Waterway Art Fest next weekend (near Houston TX.) If you're in the area be sure to stop by, I'll be in booth 404 by the Water Color Terrace near the center of things!
Enjoy these progress pics of "T is for Tiger"!