Paintings With Soul

If you are joining us in progress, here's  yesterday's post  to get you up to speed. And what I should have done yesterday which I totally neglected to do was give a shout out of tremendous thanks to fellow artist and friend  Julie Bender  for sharing her Vizsla puppies with us. Please forgive me, Julie! You'll see that the changes in today's steps are a little less dramatic - that's because I am making smaller marks and adjustments, given the bulk of the work has already been done. I'm also using glazes (layers of translucent paint) to soften or brighten my values and edges. Oddly enough, though, this stage involves more care and consideration, and thusly more time, than what I established yesterday. I love the final, final bits, when I get to add dashes of unexpected color here and there. And suggest a few whiskers. This is it, all done! Detail of "Dragon Slayers II," 10" square, Golden Open Acrylics on a Raymar panel, the second painti...

To combat the gray and gloom outside my window (and literally in the news and everywhere I seem to go), I decided today's painting had to be lighthearted and fun.   Here's the beginning of the second painting in my Dragon Slayers series. This one is a 10" square Raymar panel.   I started with a rough outline of my subject, as I was making some shifts from the original reference photo and wanted to make certain the square format was going to work. (Yes, I could have done a thumbnail sketch and prepared more conventionally for this, but I was too anxious to get to work) After sketching, I laid down a bold wash, using warm colors for the foreground and my subject, and a cooler green at the top to help my background fade into the distance.   Grabbing a wide flat brush, I started roughing in my focal point, working from it outwards. I'm not focusing on anything other than defining values and starting to carve form. My marks are sloppy and my color is not nearly precis...

Here comes the long awaited Dragon Slayer painting!   This is a 16" x 22" gallery stretched canvas - which means the painting will literally wrap around the edges. This also gave me the opportunity to build up some texture when applying the layers of gesso (primer). This texture (which is tough to see right now) will allow for some great brushwork to happen!   The underpainting is a puddle of mostly light ultramarine. That murky spot in the lower left? I ran out of the mixture, so scraped my palette in order to fill the whole surface. Because this is the underpainting part, I'm not too concerned about the variety in color that happened as a result.     I loosely sketched Marley in with a lighter blue paint, placing her intentionally at the vertical and horizontal middle points of the canvas. This creates compositional tension that will keep the viewer's eye right where I want it - travelling from her face to the dinosaur and back again.   Now the dinosaur/dr...

I rose early this morning to get household things like grocering done so that I could spend the bulk of the day with my paints (and there's nothing like a full fridge to keep kids outta my hair!!).   Here's where we left off with Mya's portrait  last week . Starting with a bright turquoise underpainting, I got her blocked in, sculpting her face with large and broad marks.     Today I started with identifying the deeper shadows inside her mask. She's got a light mask, but the density of her fur cast a smoky, dark shadow underneath the dusky fur on top. Instead of painstakingly painting all those little pockets of shadow, I laid down several dark and inky swaths of paint (remember I am a lazy painter!).    I also popped some more of that turquoise back in to her face. Having the background more of a neutral tone allowed me to see that her expression could use a little more "oomph" of color.     Now is the trickier part - mixing translucent glazes...

  ORDER NOTECARDS/REPRODUCTIONS HERE     I painted Mona's birthday portrait a couple weeks ago (remember? it was  a lesson painting  in early July), and was pleased with it at the time. But as the days went by, I saw things I thought would make the painting better.   So out came the edges of the window frame's shadow and in went lavender and cobalt glazes on her body (the image above is the reworked painting).   What do you think? Is it now a smidge better?    If paintings hang around in my studio for long enough, I nearly always find something I want to change. It's a horrible habit.   Thanks, as always, for looking at and sharing my paintings with your friends and family, Kim ksantini@turtledovedesigns.com     Share the dog a day love and forward this email to a friend     Lesson Paintings   I've created a  one-stop spot  for you to follow along with this year's lesson paintings.  ...

I started a new commission, a 12" x 14" portrait of a gorgeous Husky (Malamute? I don't know the difference - someone educate me please!). Since the painting was too big for me to complete in one day, I decided to give you yet another step-by-step.   Don't you love this underpainting? It's Light Turquoise (Pthalo) and while I don't use it that often, when I do it just makes me smile. It will add the perfect accent to all the purples and blues in Mya's coat, and play a nice compliment to the warmer buff tones in her shoulders.   You can see my sketch, done loosely in a paler version of the underpainting - I just identified where Mya's face was going to sit, and roughed out the shape of her skull before reaching for more color.     Here I've started to sculpt her face - with a Husky, because their skin and fur thickly blanket their head, it is key that I get the planes identified properly at this stage. Otherwise she'll look like a stuffed anim...