Warm Fuzzy #42 - Piggly (and video!)

 

Warm Fuzzy #42 - "Piggly" (pastel, 8x6 inches) $300 framed

My viewers chose this Piglet for the Virtual Open Studio last Monday. I was happy with how fresh this one came out!   Enjoy this 2-minute speed video below!

You can watch the full-length video of Piggly (with a subscription) HERE and many more pastel painting videos full of tutorial content and fun casual conversation about everything pastel, on my Patreon page. 

Piggly will be part of my inventory for the Online Woodlands Waterway Art Festival next month (unless she sells before then.) 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.

Piggly's reference photo compliments of Kathryn Helmink https://twitter.com/KathrynHelmink

 

Day 3 - Piggy

"Piggy" (pastel, 8x6 inches) click here to bid or buy

Day 3 of April 2020

I had some fun with this one! This was another cute baby from Fry's Fun Farm, based out of Austin Texas, who always bring their animals to the Georgetown 4th of July Celebration where I do caricatures, but I always find time to sneak away and take pictures!

here's a quick vid showing some ear strokes and background green...

The green makes the pink pop!

Thanks for watching! Please share!

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Day 10 - Pippa (and the Springfield Workshop)

"Pippa"  (pastel, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

Day 9 in my 30-Paintings-in-30-Days of November. I'm back from my workshop in Springfield and getting settled into my regular routine. I had a talented bunch and we had a lot of fun! Pippa is one of my "triple demo" from Sunday. I had three underpaintings that I did on Saturday in my assembly line approach, and then on Sunday turned on my favorite music and painted the pastel on all three in a row.

Progress shots of Pippa:

And a shot of all of my talented students!

See more photos of the workshop in this Facebook album!

Piglets in Dreamland

"Piglets in Dreamland"  (pastel, 8x8 inches) click here to bid 

Another old favorite picked up from a gallery recently.

I've also been grinding away at a bunch of portrait commissions at this Holiday craft show I'm in. I did a portrait of twins today. It wasn't this one (to preserve the client's Christmas surprise) but it was similar. This one is from 2008.

You can see more of my Detailed Pencil Portraits at RitaKirkmanDrawings.com

Velvet - day 28

"Velvet"  (pastel, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

Day 28 of my 30 paintings in 30 days of November!

I've painted this cutie or her siblings a few times, from this pose and other photos. This time I made her all black (they all actually had white legs...)

"Pansy" (7x5", sold)

"Parsnip" (7x5", sold)

"Pearl" (8x8", sold)

Pippi - day 18

"Pippi"  (pastel, 9x7 inches)

Day 18 of my 30 paintings in 30 days of November!

This pretty pig was by request of the Ming Gallery, and will be submitted to their "Spring Greetings" Exhibition in Suzhou, China. (More info on this post.) To be submitted Dec 2.

Little Piggy Pink

"Little Piggy Pink"  (pastel, 7x5 inches)  $200 unframed for a limited time

One of the demos from my workshop in Paso Robles CA last weekend.

I'm feeling the pain of having not painted all week. I suppose there's never a good time for one's hard drive to die, but mine creaked out its last breaths right before I left for CA, so I ordered a new SSD drive which was waiting for me when I got back, and this week I've been mostly re-installing stuff. Funny how easy it is to forget what a pain in the @s$ that can be. I've reinstalled Windows on a computer and even reformatted a hard drive at least 3 times in my life, so I don't get anxious about it (esp now that I use Carbonite as well as a local backup) I just make sure I remember to de-activate Adobe CS3 so that I can reinstall it on the re-born desktop.  But my goodness, it's always more complicated to do the simplest things when you don't have everything right where it usually is. It took me almost an hour yesterday just to print some bios. First I had to load Adobe CS3 (since I had never saved my latest bio updates to PDF) then download my bio files from Carbonite (since Carbonite takes like a week to restore as many files as I have!)  then I had to search out my saved fonts (because the newly installed Windows didn't have a couple of the fonts in my bio - I should have anticipated that because that's why I always back up my fonts...) Then I had to load the printer driver to get my computer to see it on the network. In the midst of that I had some trouble with my home network/internet connection and had to finally switch from the wired connection to wireless in order to download the driver and connect to the printer.  Ugh.

I should have just woken up my 17-yr-old computer-geek son and had him do all of it for me (as he was the one to load me up with the new Windows -- from a flash drive no less!) but there's something innately satisfying to being able to do most of this annoying computer stuff on one's own, esp at my age! (Use it or loose it, as they say!)

Next week I'm off to Nebraska for another workshop (road trip this time!) Hopefully I'll post again before I go.

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Sweet Dreams

"Sweet Dreams"  (pastel, 8x8 inches) framed, $375

The Bayou City Art Festival was another great success. Not surprising with the absolutely perfect weather!

Here's one that I'm very surprised didn't sell. It's so fresh, I hadn't even had a chance to post it. Since these sweet dreaming piglets are already framed, the retail price is $375. If it doesn't sell between now and mid-May, it will be included in my show "Beauty of the Beast" at the Rockport Center for the Arts, Rockport TX, May 14 - June 13, 2015. I'll have all circles and squares there.

Here are some progress shots:

Thanks for watching! Please share!

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Pansy

"Pansy"  (pastel, 7x5 inches)  $249 The Gallery at Round Top

I've been a little down lately about taking so much time 'off' from posting and painting. Not really my fault (of course! ha) I can blame it on the December craft show, and then my kid's Christmas break was a contagion of laziness.

Well, tonight I was taking some time to update the 'sold' status on some paintings and mark some new additions to my inventory at The Gallery at Round Top, and I discovered that Pansy (painted in October) had never been posted! Shock! I don't know how that happened, but I'm happy to have something to post tonight!

She's from the same group of photos as Parsnip and Pearl, both sold. She's now in a new temporary home at The Gallery at Round Top, in Round Top TX, until she finds someone to take her to a more permanent home!

Saturday I had a great workshop with the Pastel Society of the Southwest in Houston TX. I'll post some photos tomorrow (or one of these days. Haven't even unloaded the truck yet. The laziness is proving to be pernicious!)

Parsnip - day 27

"Parsnip"  (pastel, 7x5 inches)  click here to bid

Day 26 in my 30-paintings-in-30-days of September!

Another cutie from Fry's Fun Farm!

Progress shots:

 Thanks for watching! Please share!

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Petunia

"Petunia"  (pastel, 6x6 inches)  sold

Day 2 of my 30 paintings in 30 days of September! This is the little pig that my client chose over "Mauvelous". I've painted her about 4 times now in various sizes. It's unbelievable how difficult it is to catch a piglet with it's head looking up, and in good light to boot! ...They're either rooting around on the ground, or taking naps!

Here's the pic with the acrylic primer underpainting and the first dark pastel laid on (Terry Ludwig Eggplant, of course!)