"Wildflowers" from Karen Margulis Paint-Along, and what I did after

 

"Wildflowers" from Karen Margulis Paint-Along (pastel, 8x12 or 8x10 if cropped)
(And my 16th of 21-in-31 paintings this month!) bid or buy
Ok, here's one I tweaked pretty dramatically. I painted along with Karen Margulis during her Pastel Live demo... Karen was just so FAST! It was hard to keep up.  My original 1-hour painting to Karen's demo came out ok I guess, but much looser than I'm used to and it just looked kinda messy to me.
So I went at it today, using all kinds of methods I've learned from a variety of instructors lately (and some stuff I just made up, lol.) Really I was just playing with it to see what would happen. It's still messy and loose, but I like the spacing of the flowers better now. Anyway, I had fun making marks so that's what's important!
See a GIF of the changes here!

Day 20 of 21-in-31: Wildflower Field #38

 

Day 20 of 21-in-31: "Wildflower Field #38" (pastel, 4x4 inches) bid or buy
Almost done with my 21-in-31 goal! This is the other little 4x4 I painted yesterday. This one is "Wildflower Field #38". There weren't really any flowers in this scene, but I felt like it was calling out for some delicate little pink blossoms!
I used almost the same pastels here that I used for yesterday's little park trail. In fact I painted them side by side.
See a quick progress video here!

Wildflower Field #35

 

"Wildflower Field #35" (pastel, 7x9 inches) bid or buy here

This was the first of the three wildflower paintings I did in my "Wildflower Interpretations" Paint-Along earlier this month. This is on UArt paper, 400 grit, with an alcohol washed pastel underpainting.

 

I had fun creating this little one-minute speed video...

 

 

 

Become a Patron for access to the full-length Paint-Along video of all three variations, with reference photo and tons of painting tips! https://www.patreon.com/posts/51374213

 

 

And in case you missed the last post, I need to tell you... 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!

 

Wildflower Field #36

 "Wildflower Field #36" (pastel on Canson, 8x8 inches) bid or buy here

This is the second little painting from last Saturday's Paint-Along. This one on regular Canson Mi-Tientes paper in an olive green sort of color. I hadn't worked on Canson for quite a while. I had forgotten how softly subtle it can be. 

See some progress pics on my Patreon page here.

And in case you missed the last post, I need to tell you... 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!

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!

 

Day 13 - Ice, a customized pet commission

"Ice" (pastel, 11x14 inches) sold

Another of my scheduled commission jobs finished last week. Ice's human had a photo of him in a field, and wanted the wildflowers added. This was fun; more like a "figure in the landscape" painting, which I'm slowly getting better at!

client photos

 Painting progress:

Thanks for watching! Please share!

.

Wildflower Field #33

"Wildflower Field #33" (pastel, 6x8 inches)  sold

Here's the other field from the same photo as yesterday's. This was a demo to show how surface and underpainting variances can affect the finished painting. This one had a watercolor underpainting on white Wallis paper. Below is the reference photo (greatly enhanced in Photoshop) and the other painting, which was on my usual gold-primed gatorboard with a warm pastel underpainting. In both cases, I allowed the underpainting to influence my application of pastel and color choices in the finished paintings.

enhanced photo

"Wildflower Field #34" pastel, 5x7

 A couple shots of me working on the underpaintings... (#34 is on top, #33 is below it)

Wildflower Field #34

"Wildflower Field #34" (pastel 5x7 inches)  click here to bid

Here's one of two landscapes I did from the same reference photo, as a demonstration of how different surfaces and underpaintings can affect how a finished pastel painting will look.

This one was on my usual gold-primed gatorboard, and then had a pastel underpainting in warm tones washed in with alcohol. Tomorrow I'll post the other one, Wildflower Field #33, which I sold to one of the students.

.

Baby and Pearl

"Baby and Pearl"  (pastel, 8x10 inches)  Private Commission

Here's the one I've been working on this week. 'Texas Pearl' is the baby (and 'Baby' is the mama - That's right!) This client purchased a 12x12 white calf painting from me early last year because it looked "..just like Texas Pearl!"

Pearl and Baby have since been sold, so she commissioned a painting from her favorite photo of them together - This scene is just days after Pearl was born.

.

Wildflower Field #32

"Wildflower Field #32"  (pastel, 8x8 inches)   sold

Here's a quick one I did right before leaving for the Bayou City Art Fest last weekend.  I remembered to get photos throughout the process. Here's the demo: