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Category: Peeking Behind the Easel

December 15, 2011
Kathy
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New Teddy Bear Painting

Posted in Art Work, and Peeking Behind the Easel

Here's my newest painting:  "Teddy Bears Three" 

teddy bear - sibstudio dot com

  I started this one several months ago and got stuck on the teddy bear fur.  I've written about getting stuck on a painting in previous posts. In this case, I knew what the problem was but it was going to need serious concentration to move it forward.  I pulled it out after joining StitchSilly in her pledge to build up shop inventory by add one thing a week for 8 weeks. 

I used my daughter's old stuffed animal collection for the initial composition. I liked how the well loved toys no longer sit up straight – they lean against each other to stay up. I used an Ampersand gesso art board for this painting. The art board has a very smooth surface and handles lots of light layers of paint well.  Painting teddy bear fur requires light layers of gradating paint colors, lightly tapped (stippled) on to create the soft fluffy look of the fur.   I started with mid tone brown and slowly added burnt umber ( dark brown)  to the mix as I stippled on the fur. Then I use the first mid tone brown and begin adding a little yellow, and then white to create the lighter fur.  When layering 15 -25 layers of paint, it's pretty easy to end up with a muddy look  – which is what happened on the first round. This week,  I slowly reworked the stippling, painted on the bows and faces.  Now  I think it looks like fluffy teddy bear fur.  : )

SibStudio dot com Teddy Bears

That's a peek behind my easel!  Thanks for stopping by!

 

October 12, 2011
Kathy
6 Comments

A Tribute to Garlic

Posted in Art Work, Peeking Behind the Easel, and Reference Photos

A Tribute to Garlic

What's not to love about garlic? Just about any dish with garlic is delicious and it has a huge amount of folklore behind it.  What I like most about garlic though,  is how it looks.

SibStudio.com Garlic Photographed for painting

The entire bulb is wrapped in thin translucent paper – like nature's tissue paper. As you pull out each individual clove, they are also wrapped similarly.  It's like a little wrapped present from the garden. Once you get the clove unwrapped, the smoothness of the clove contrasts with the papery roughness of the bulb. It's an interesting vegetable and really fun to paint.

SibStudio.com garlic
As a tribute to garlic, I painted all the parts of the garlic – the bulbs, the paper skin, the cloves and the undersides with the hair-like  roots.  I chose a creamy white neutral  background to not detract from garlic. However it needed a few pops of color, so I added sage and forest greens as an ode to the garden it grows in and to add some depth to the painting. I also added a little touch of maroon – red in the garlic shadows to contrast with the green.  And if you look closely at the both the photos, you can see the subtle maroons in the garlic shadows.

SibStudio.com painting of garlic. Can be found on Etsy.com
And that is my tribute to garlic and a peek behind my easel.  

September 30, 2011
Kathy
2 Comments

Pearl Painting

Posted in Art Work, and Peeking Behind the Easel

Pearl Painting

I have a new miniature painting in my Etsy shop. This is the kind of oyster I want to find.

SibStudio Pearl on a Half Shell Oyster

One of the things I like about painting the miniatures is they can act as a thumbprint for a larger painting.  I've painted oyster shells in prior paintings but haven't tackle pearls. This was a chance to experiment with capturing the luster of the pearl. I used little touches of purple, blues, and creams to recreate the colors you can see in a pearl.

I took a little artistic license and used a bed of sand rather than the oyster itself. I wanted to contrast the texture of sand versus the smoothness of the pearl. 

I also used a pearly finished paint for the background to contrast the dullness of the oyster and highlight the pearl. I think in a larger painting, the pearly background would be overkill, but it works well on a small scale painting.
And that's a peek behind my easel – enjoy the rest of your day!

September 27, 2011
Kathy
2 Comments

More Rain

Posted in Peeking Behind the Easel

More Rain

We are 5 inches short of breaking the all time rain records here in Eastern Pennsylvania.  And of course, it's raining again today!   : )    Yesterday when the sun was out, streaming into the house,  I was thinking –  Wow!  The house looks so nice when it's sunny.  Lol!  

I don't have the patience to take rain photos so here a cool one from the copy right free files of bing.com.  The good thing about rain is it's easy to get to work in my studio. It's really hard to paint inside when the sun is shining and the temperatures have cooled off.  As I'm gathering up my brushes and paints, here's a little rainy day humor :

Isn't that helpful?  LOL    Enjoy the rest of your day!

September 10, 2011
Kathy
8 Comments

Solving A Painting That Is Not Working, Part 2

Posted in Art Work, and Peeking Behind the Easel

Solving A Painting That Is Not Working, Part 2

 I suggested several steps yesterday to take when you can't figure out why a painting isn't working. For this painting, even turning it upside down wasn't getting me to what the problem was.  So luckily for me, my family was here. Family – especially teens and young 20's will tell you the truth – even when you didn't ask them.   : )

My family was curious how I could  fix the imbalance after they noticed the problem.  Since they were interested I got them involved in step 1 – brainstorm how to fix it.   With my chalk – step 2 – I sketched out on the painted canvas our ideas. [ Chalk is great  – it doesn't disturb the painting and wipes right off. ]    We tried adding more sunflowers, more details on the pumpkins, pumpkin leaves and vines from the stems, until someone blurted out turning it into a jack- 0-lantern.  Whoa!….. that was not at all what I had been thinking. 

But you know what?  It worked. It balanced the painting and added a light note to the painting to match the color palette I had chosen.  Here's the chalked idea:

Using chalk to try out details on a painting

And here's the final painting after also adding a final tint on the pumpkins and photographing in natural light:

I had envisioned an Indian summer day for this painting, picking a light palette of colors rather than the usual darker colors used in pumpkin paintings. Adding a face to the pumpkin kept a lightness in the painting in addition to balancing out a composition error.  In a roundabout way, that's where the painting ended up – a warm, Indian summer day in early October.

What do you think?