Karen Margulis offered her Patreon members a demo of how to paint shiny objects. Using her reference photo — but modifying it for my own purposes — I did this study on Colourfix Original (Soft Umber color), and used both hard and soft pastels.
Follow-along
A Karen Margulis Follow-Along On Patreon: A Bird’s nest
Today I painted a bird’s nest based off of one of Karen Margulis‘ paintings. The step-by-step demo is on her Patreon site and can be accessed here (paywall; subscriber site). All the colors used are based on her work. Karen says in this Patreon post: “I DO give permission for you to share your paintings done from my demos on social media provided that you credit me and link to this Patreon group.“
I did this practice work on a gray-toned sheet of Canson Mi-Teintes.
We had a robin who nested in our persimmon tree this past summer and I took pictures of the babies in the nest, as well as the mother bird sitting on the nest. Now that I have an idea how to paint a bird’s nest in pastel, I’m going to use my own reference photo. We had a robin who nested in our persimmon tree this past summer and I took pictures of the babies in the nest, as well as the mother bird sitting on the nest
Follow-Along: Karen Margulis Landscape
Today I watched a YouTube video (click here) by Karen Margulis about successful strategies for a daily painting habit. She demonstrated painting a landscape in pastel in 20 minutes and after I watched it once I decided to follow-along and try my hand at her style.
Below are step-by-step pictures of my attempt. I used a portion of my Canson Touch board in Twilight color. Karen’s painting is much superior to mine, but this was actually fun! It really did take 20 minutes. AND I feel ready to give a shot to doing a painting using one of my own photos.
The big tree really only looks like a tree from a distance, so I included a distant shot. I don’t yet have the skill Margulis has so I would want to draw out my trees a bit more. I can’t quite make the connection from abstract value shape to something I view as a tree after painting.
Follow-Along: Gail Sibley’s Red Bowl
Gail Sibley has a video on YouTube wherein she uses white pastel paper, and a set of Terry Ludwig’s “Best Loved Basics” to paint a red-orange bowl with a fork balanced on it.
I decided to try my own hand at painting the red bowl. The paper I used was a gray-toned Canson Mi Teintes, and, since I don’t have Terry Ludwig pastels, I used a random set of 8 pastels (only 7 shown), making my best guess as to a close match to what Gail was using. I used vine charcoal to sketch the bowl on the pastel paper, and 2B charcoal pencil in the preliminary planning sketch.
I also created a grayscale version of the photo of the bowl, and the values are skewed. The background should not be darker than the cast shadow. Ditto for the shadow in the middle of the bowl, appearing like a gray stripe. It should not have been darker than the cast shadow.
I may tweak this painting tomorrow, if the paper can hold any more pastel.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 