Duke the Yellow Lab
This is Duke, a golden lab in the family. He was the first dog I ever painted and I decided to paint him again for my show since he has such great coloring.
Happy New Year! Read the rest of this post...
Byron the Italian Greyhound, Finished
I chose a blue sky background to set off his reddish brown coat. I like the angle of the pose and the strong look in his face.
Merry Christmas! Read the rest of this post...
Dachshund Puppy Portrait
I painted her portrait for my dog art show at Pride and Pedigree. I love the expression in her eyes and I decided to make this portrait a little less realistic and incorporate more bright colors. I didn't take progress photos along the way this time, but here's the finished painting:
Yorkshire Terrier Portrait, Finished
The regal pose in the photo made me want to do a very classic shaded background, so I made a mix of Burnt Umber and Titan Buff. After painting the background around Brody, I touched up the edges of his fur to make the wisps of hair overlap the background.
Brody's painting and others are currently on display at the Pride and Pedigree daycare in Oakland. Read the rest of this post...
Golden Retriever Portrait, Finished
I like the way he is looking at the viewer. Between his feet is a dried pig's ear, one of his favorite snacks. Read the rest of this post...
Vincent the Golden Retriever
I'm going to be painting him in his favorite spot, lying on the hardwood floor in his house with his family.
Here's my initial sketch:
Since this is a large portrait (24" x 36") and Vincent has complex coloring in his coat, I decided to start with his face and experiment with layering the colors, before painting in the rest of the body. Read the rest of this post...
Italian Greyhound Portrait
Byron is a professional service dog. This photo was taken after he won a show championship, and I love the faraway look on his face.
I want to capture this look in a painting, but with a simpler background than in the photo. Here's my sketch:
Read the rest of this post...Brody the Yorkie
I'm going to be painting his portrait for my dog art show at the Pride and Pedigree gallery in California next month.
Here's my progress so far:
Read the rest of this post...Winter Camping Painting
This painting was inspired by a night I spent in the mountains a few years ago in British Columbia. I worked with thin layers of interference colors to bring out the glow on the tent and the snow on the mountains: Read the rest of this post...
My Favourite Brushes
I mention my brushes often but I don't always show what they look like. I wrote a section a while ago on how to purchase brushes if you are learning to paint; this is a more in-depth discussion about the specific brushes I recommend for intermediate painters.
There are many shapes and bristle types out there—I found a good online summary here. Contrary to what you might think, you really don't need very many brushes. Once you figure out what sizes you like, you will probably find yourself just using a few brushes over and over again. I'm a fan of synthetic bristles whenever possible, as they are usually cheaper and perform as well or nearly as well as their less animal-friendly counterparts.
Alpine Lakes Painting
This one features a mountain peak above the clouds:
Read the rest of this post...
Ruckle Park, British Columbia
Here's another painting in the series:
This painting has special meaning to me because it is painted from a photo taken on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, on the morning of my sister's wedding. She had a beautiful outdoor ceremony and after dinner we sat around the campfire with this view. My husband Travis and I camped in the park before and after the wedding. Travis crawled out of the tent at about 6:30 am to take some sunrise photos, and when he took this one he said he could already picture it as a painting. Read the rest of this post...
Tent at an Alpine Lake
This is detail shot of the tent's reflection by the water:
To make the northern lights, I painted in the highlights in the sky in white, let them dry and then brushed Pthalo Blue over top.
I like using a tent that contrasts with the sky but I'm considering trying a limited palette as well. The tent makes an interesting focal point but it could also be good to hide it a little bit, so that it's not the first thing that you notice when you look at the painting. Read the rest of this post...
Studio Furniture and Easels
If you're getting serious about painting and have room to set up a semi-permanent studio, these are the things I recommend for dealing with small spaces, on a budget. If you paint often and for long periods of time, you'll need to have good posture in your studio to prevent stress injuries. I don't have any training in ergonomics, but I paint every day and I had to make some adjustments to my painting habits to prevent muscle strain. This is what worked for me:
Read the rest of this post...Sequoia National Park
This is a painting of a rock in an area called Big Five Lakes in Sequoia National Park, California. This area is several days hike from civilization and up around 10,000 feet elevation, so the stars were pretty incredible. We didn't camp on this rock, but I added the blue tent to provide a contrast with the orange sky.
Next are a few detail shots from the painting. Read the rest of this post...
Mt. Whitney
I greatly exaggerated the color of the rocks to contrast with the blue of the sky. To make the shadows between the rocks, I used a glaze of Payne's Grey blended with glazing medium. Payne's Grey is a favorite of mine for making shadows. It is actually a blend of black and UItramarine Blue, the primary color I use for skies. Read the rest of this post...
Details from the Jurassic Sea Painting
The dinosaur painting I posted the other day is quite large and detailed, so I've added some closeups. This painting reminds me of a painting I did ten years ago of an underwater scene from the west coast of Canada.
I had fun painting a warm water scene this time, and although I wish there were more plants to work with I decided to keep it simple and focus on the animals. These pictures are slightly smaller than life-sized (er, relative to the painting, not the dinosaurs) and you can see the canvas texture.
Blending Colors on your Palette
This is a quick demonstration of my color blending method, and how you can use it to mix shades if you're learning how to paint. Beginners have a tendency to overmix their paint and work from a few pre-mixed shades, resulting in flat colors and paint-by-number paintings. This is my technique for making a wide variety of shades very quickly as you work.
To start, put dabs of paint on your palette a few centimeters apart. Try to distribute the paint so that the colors you'll be mixing will be close to each other, but don't overthink it. Some artists use a circular arrangement of paint on the palette, I tend to just make a few groups of colors with some space in between. For the demo, I'm just using two colors, yellow and green.
Jurassic Sea Finished Painting
Several months ago I started working on a painting of dinosaurs from the Jurassic. I initially chose a land scene with the focal point being a group of Diplodocus grazing. However, after doing some more research, I discovered that I had painted the neck position incorrectly on the dinosaur in the back, and it was bothering me. Changing it would have thrown off my composition, so I decided to start over with a different scene.
Jim's Glider, a Story in a Painting
This is a painting I painted earlier this summer using a story as a reference. I usually work from photographs, so it was a bit of a challenge to put all the details together properly, but I like the way it turned out.
It is August 1929, on the North Shore of Vancouver, Canada, my favourite city. My husband's grandfather Jim is taking off in a glider, while his friend tows the glider in the car. Their wives, my husband's grandmother and her best friend, are looking on and waving at Jim in the plane.
Flying With Your Paints
One drawback of acrylic paints is the size and weight of the materials you need. Because watercolor paints can be transported dry, in a pan, you can carry a large set of colors for a fraction of the weight of paint that's in tubes. In addition, a block of paper takes up far less space than a stack of canvases, so watercolor has the clear advantage when space is an issue. My husband and I sometimes go on ultralight backpacking trips in the mountains, and on these trips I usually bring watercolors and leave my acrylics at home to save weight in my pack. However, most of the time I travel I prefer to bring my preferred medium, acrylic on canvas. This is my list of essentials for fitting everything in a carry-on suitcase.
Read the rest of this post...Plein Air at Echo Lake
I brought a small selection of my acrylic paints, a pad of palette paper and a canvas small enough that I could just put it on my lap (12" x 16") while I sat on the shore. The water patterns kept changing as I painted, so I waited for one that I liked and tried to remember it as well as I could while I painted it in. Read the rest of this post...
Snowy Coastal Inlet
I wanted it to look like an imaginary nighttime coastal scene with snow falling across the inlet. It's painted in mostly a mixture of Payne's Grey and white, but the thing I did differently was to add a layer of clear gloss medium at the end to simulate different water patterns.
I used a thick mixture over the rough areas of the water and made bumps in it with my angle shader brush. Where the water was calmer, I used a thin coat of the same gloss medium, but in smooth linear strokes. This effect was not visible face on, (and it's not easy to see in the photo) but it looks neat on the wall where the painting catches the light. Read the rest of this post...
My Color Palette
This is a section on my standard color palette so that you can see what I'm talking about when I refer to the colors I'm using.
If you're just buying your first paints, read my section on the essential colors you need to get. It's better to start out with only a few colors, so you'll learn good mixing skills. As you add to your palette, you'll find that you prefer some shades over others. My preferred manufacturer, Golden, currently makes about 100 colors. I use about 20 in my standard palette.
Dinosaurs!
I am embarking on a very exciting new project, a painting for my cousin Andrew. My assignment was to paint some dinosaurs of the Jurassic era. Since I don't know very much about dinosaurs, I did a lot of research and decided to paint a group of Diplodocus grazing in a fern prairie at the edge of a forest. I am a big botany enthusiast and I wanted to try something with a lot of exotic vegetation. I am trying to resist the temptation to make the painting cluttered with too many species, I want to keep it clean and focused.
This painting will be a challenge because I'm used to working with photos, and naturally there are no photos of the Diplodocus. I have read about these dinosaurs and looked at many other artist's depictions, based on skeletal remains. Here's my rough sketch:
Art Photography by Travis
I'm Kathryn's husband, Travis. My day-job is physics, but I'm also an amateur photographer. Since we got a digital SLR camera last year, I've done all the photography of Kathryn's finished paintings. (Kathryn takes the progress photos for her blog using a simple point-and-click digital camera, but large, high quality images are needed for prints.) There was a request a little while ago for information on how to take photos of paintings, so I'll explain my technique.
If your artwork is small, you can scan it using a flatbed scanner. However, for paintings bigger than 11x14", it's hard to find a scanner large enough, so photography is the best option.
Portrait of an Artist, Part 2
Today I worked on my portrait of Genie, working in her art studio. As an animal artist, I'm quite new to people portraits so I was a bit nervous about how I would paint skin, especially since I was using a black and white photo to paint a color portrait. Here's my progress so far:
I took lots of photos of the progress up to this point, have a look:
Portrait of an Artist, Part 1
And now for something completely different...
I'm starting on human portraits. I'll be painting a portrait of Genie, in her art studio, surrounded by some of her own paintings. One of the things I love about this photo is that although it was taken almost half a century ago, the woman in the photograph is using almost exactly the same model of easel that I'll be using to paint her portrait. It looks like she might be painting left-handed like I do as well.
This portrait will be particularly challenging for several reasons; it's a very large portrait (24"x36"), it's a subject I'm not familiar with, and finally, I'll be converting it from black and white to color, based on a description. Here's my initial line drawing, not including the paintings:
I'll be going through a lot of masking tape to make all those straight lines. Wish me luck!
Portrait of Dad, Age 8
Dad was a good sport for letting me put this picture of him on the internet. This is a pencil crayon portrait I drew of my father when I was about 8 years old. I've been reading up on human portrait techniques now that I am painting one, and I thought this picture would be useful to illustrate a common mistake when drawing faces.
Reading Paint Labels
I talk about transparency a lot on the blog, since it's a great way to do subtle color adjustments and luminous effects in your paintings. Some paints are better suited to transparent effects than others, due to the type of pigment used.
In general, student quality acrylic paints are not very transparent, since there is less pigment and more filler in the paint. This can be a good thing if you're painting over and correcting parts of your painting (a feature of acrylics that beginners love), but it can make it more difficult to do subtle adjustments without repainting.
High quality, professional acrylic paints have a neat packaging feature: the outside of the tube is hand-painted with a stroke of paint from that paint lot, so you can see exactly what you're dealing with. Here are some tubes of paint I bought last summer:
Paint Pigment Series
If you've been shopping for paint, you'll notice that intermediate and professional quality paints are priced by series. Student quality paint contains less pigment and is usually priced uniformly for all colors. The series number is based on the cost of the actual pigment that the paint is made from, with paints in Series 1 or 2 costing a fraction of those in Series 8 or 9.
Acrylic, watercolor and oil paints are made out of the same basic pigments, suspended in different binding media. It surprised me to learn that many paint colors are still made with natural, earth derived pigments. Depending on where the pigments come from and how they are processed, some are more costly than others to produce. There are a few synthetic versions of expensive colors, often called "hues," that are much cheaper but perform differently.