Careful What You Wish For

"Mooove Back!" (pastel, 16x8 inches)

Our times have changed so dramatically in such a short time. Just two months ago I was sketching portraits for my 25th year at the San Antonio Rodeo, surrounded by hoards of people (well, on Saturdays at least!) Then I woke up one day in March and it seemed as if my entire calendar for the foreseeable future was wiped clean.

For the first couple days of cancellations, I was frankly shocked and a little depressed, wondering where my income would come from. But at heart I've always been one to take life as it comes and follow the opportunities that life presents to me. An idea from another artist prompted me to have a Studio Sale, which has been quite successful thanks to my wonderfully supportive clients! (You know who you are, and Thank You!)

In week 2 and 3 of these strange isolated days, the new reality has begun to settle in, and I've been seeing this as a golden opportunity to handle those critical actions that have constantly been pushed to the bottom of the to-do list since 2016... namely CLEAN UP THE COMPUTER, and the surrounding office! 😂 (and next.... the Master Closet!?)

But humming just beneath the surface of all this domestic activity is the strong, pervasive desire that has been plucking at my mind for months, digging it's way through the frustrations of juggling several businesses and scheduling conflicts. That little voice is telling me "I just want to be a Daily Painter!" In the tradition of Julian Merrow-Smith, Dwayne Kaiser and Carol Marine.......... Drop the events, the craft shows, the festivals... I just want to paint, and post, and see where that leads.

(I've been half-heartedly attempting to paint daily since 2011, but my average has dropped off. Sure, the unwritten "rules" of Daily Painting are not as firmly followed as in the early years of the movement. Even the big names don't paint/post EVERY day any more. But most of them did - for years!)

So the little voice is saying "..What are you waiting for? We've cleared your schedule... "

I'm filled with sadness and regret that it has taken a global pandemic to finally bring this little voice to the forefront. But that just firms my resolve to make this opportunity worth the effort. I'll be taking this adventure one day at a time, and we'll see how far it goes.

I sincerely hope you have not had any friends or loved ones severely affected by this virus. How have the forced stay-at-home rules and the changed situations affected your daily life and your future goals?

Today is Day 1 of April. I invite you to follow along with my journey and I'd love to hear from you!

Follow my Daily Paintings

Background Binds (What to Do?)

"Mondo" with photo reference

I recently had an inquiry from a friend about what do do with backgrounds.

Hi Rita, 
I just discovered your art recently and I love the colors and the expressions of your animals, just beautiful. I am struggling to learn to paint in pastels myself, and deciding when to use which color is especially difficult for me. I was wondering how you determine which colors to use in your backgrounds for your animal portraits, do you have any tips?


Color is a complicated question, and one that I've learned is answered best by "value and temperature." I recently wrote an article on my Art Journal Blog about this, see here: http://ritakirkmanjournal.blogspot.com/2014/11/value-and-temperature-or-how-do-i.html

Backgrounds can sometimes present the greatest challenge in a painting. Especially when the painting is of a recognizable subject that holds its own as a center of interest and is easy enough to paint using a reference. But what about when your subject is surrounded by other objects that you don't want to include?

Sometimes, in my reference photo, I find that the background is perfectly lovely and I want to paint it exactly how I see it (..This doesn't happen very often!!) Usually, I have to use artistic license:

"Azul" with photo reference

I usually ask myself when I'm building up my under painting, "Do I want this subject to stand out boldly from the background, or do I want it to harmonize subtly with the background and the painting as a whole?"

If I want to be bold I use contrasting values. (dark behind the light parts and light behind the dark parts.)

"Bianca" and "Inky"

If I want to be subtle and harmonious (a more recent goal of mine,) I try for analogous colors and very close values from subject to background:

"Paella" and "Mr. Frost"

And usually, my subjects are outdoors, so in what I call my simple "default" background, I habitually use the standard laws of atmospheric perspective, and use cooler (and sometimes lighter and/or more neutral) colors in the far background, and warmer landscape colors in the closer background:


I've also gotten into the habit of keeping the backgrounds "fuzzy", meaning no crisp edges anywhere in the background. This helps with the feeling of  a soft focus that sets off the subject by contrast, and remains "farther away."

As a last point,always try to use some of the same colors in your background as in your subject. This will help assure color harmony, no matter which other value contrasts you're aiming for.

After a while, you'll learn how to completely ignore what's in your image background, and create a background that will best support your star subject!

(Personally, larger compositions have tended to give me the most background troubles. If you'd like to read more about my struggles with backgrounds, here's a perfect example from a while back. I wrote about "Leader of the Pack", in two posts:
http://ritakirkman.blogspot.com/2010/08/newest-cow-painting-progression-photos.html
and
http://ritakirkman.blogspot.com/2010/10/leader-of-pack-finally-really-finished.html)

"Leader of the Pack" (2010, pastel, 32x32 inches) first finish and final finish

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear from you if you found this helpful!

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Judging the PGE Member Show

A few weeks ago, I was asked by Dorothea Schulz of the Pastel Guild of Europe to be the judge for their "Get Dusty" Online Member's Show for the month of April.  I was honored to accept! Past judges from the shows include Jacob Aguiar, Adrian Frankel Giuliani, Jude Tolar, and Christine DiMauro, among many others.

April's theme for the competition was Baby Animals. Awww... who could resist? And based on my own work, I guess I was eminently suitable for judging. Dorothea sent me the link to the entries last weekend, and I enjoyed viewing them for a couple days before making my choices.

See the entire show here!

There were only 16 entries. They are a small group - but very talented!! It was quite as difficult to decide on the placements as it would have been with 10 times the entries, mainly because almost all of the works were of equal quality, with a variety of strengths in different artistic ways. 

I wanted to share with you here my picks for First, Second and Third Places, and the three Honorable Mentions that were allowed. All of the entries demonstrated strength in values and draftsmanship, so I'll be commenting on the additional qualities that made these six stand out in my viewings.

First Place - "Harley" by Claudia Chimenti

The composition was the first thing that struck me about this precious puppy portrait. The variety of flowing diagonals, enhanced by the strong warm light and the relaxed and trustful pose of the puppy make this a powerful painting. Chimenti is also wise in her choice of a limited palette, using shades and tones of whites to set off Harley's brown patch. The reflected light blues in the shadows are very well done. The simple, un-fussy handling of the background and sleeve fabric are the perfect frame for the more detailed rendering of this adorable face, while the bits of warm salmon-brown color pervading the entire painting allow his brown patch of fur, as the one main area of vibrant color, to still harmonize with the whole.

Second Place - "Explorer" by Dolores Saul

Light, color, texture, and a moment captured in time are what I see first in this little wild Explorer. The subtle handling of the warms and cools within the various tones of fur are masterfully done! The wonderful textural contrasts of the finely detailed fur, to the ripples of the water, the middle-ground grasses, and finally the very loose, gestural rocks in the background, create a convincing sense of depth. I like the unconventional pose withing this otherwise traditional portrait composition (the subject centered within the area of the painting.) The cat is looking off to the left, as if something there has caught his attention, and in a moment he will leave the frame. But this doesn't encourage our eyes into leaving; the sunlight streaming on the cat's face holds our eyes, and the bits of dark along his shadowed side and in the background bounce our eyes around and down the right side, and back up the sunny side to his face...

Third Place - "Triplet" by Elisabeth Blass

This one got the "Awww!" response right off the bat for me, but I might be a sucker for ducklings in the light. Then the more I looked beyond that initial cuteness, the more I liked. The arrangement of shapes and patterns within this square come across as refreshingly spontaneous without being awkward, which makes me suspect they may have been very carefully composed. Even though the two ducklings closer to us are offset in high contrast by the shadowed rock, our eye still jumps back to the duckling above, who, in spite of being mostly the same value as the water, appears to be more strongly bathed in the bright warm light because of the temperature contrast of the blue around him.
Fresh and spontaneous describes the pastel application as well!

Honorable mention - "Ducklings" by Karin Kießling

Balance, contrast and harmony. Incredible color harmony for one; the entire painting looks like it may have been done with shades and tints of just three colors. The balance in this composition is sweetly calming, just as the visual of these ducklings are for our eyes. Almost symmetrical, but not quite. Held in place by the reflection which touches the bottom edge. The amazing detail of the wet feathers is contrasted by the smooth, calm surrounding water.

Honorable Mention - "Guarded Childhood" by Eva Schläfli

Yes, baby animals -- what's not to love? This painting perfectly exemplifies a mother's love and a baby's safe haven. Once again, wonderful color harmony. Excellent detail without looking overworked. The close cropped view with the chimp's face centered is another almost-symmetrical composition, but the subtle variety of angles created by the hand, arm, and head create a sweet cocoon of comfort for this baby chimp, and pull us back to the expression in the face, and most especially, the eyes.

Honorable Mention - "Puppies" by Ute Farr

Speaking of expression... These are the happiest puppies I've seen in a long time! This one's all about the JOY and the FUR! In fact, in spite of there appearing to be no discernible light source (the reference may have been a flash-front photo?) Ms. Farr was able to create a wonderful depth of fluffiness within the subtle varied tones of warm and cool whites, blues and violets that make these coats so believably thick. The simplicity of the background and the sofa edge support the strength of this traditional portrait pose.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed the show, and check out the rest of the Pastel Guild of Europe's site!

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Scan Pastel Paintings for Better Prints

A recent question from an artist friend asked about how I get good image files for making prints:

"I wanted to tell you that I think your art is beautiful and inspiring. I work with pastels also. May I ask you a question: If you do giclees, what is the best way? Is there such a thing as scanning the art, do you take a photo?"

Here's my answer (with a few revisions to make a better blog post!)

Yes! Scan it!

I do scan all my artwork, whether I make prints or not, so that I have an accurate, high-resolution image file for my records. I highly recommend scanning artwork (and pastel is perfectly fine being placed down on the glass.) My current scanner is an Epson V700; it's been the best one I've had so far, and has lasted the longest.
Scanning small works are easy, as they fit well in the scan bed:

I've also learned not to be TOO picky with getting an exact color match on the print (I had a cheap little hp scanner years ago that really captured exact color - except couldn't separate the very darkest values [has to do with D-Max rating]) Every scanner will be a little different and you just get used to learning how to get the best out of it. This Epson came with Silverfast SE software which I really like.

Scan vs. Photo 

Sometimes I will just photograph a painting if I'm away from home and need a quick post. The best way, in my opinion, to photograph artwork (if, like me, you don't have all the expensive photography lights and meters to balance everything perfectly) is to set the painting on a shady porch in daylight and, standing right over it, aim straight down with your camera and zoom in to just around the painting, making sure the edges are squared with your viewfinder. (If the painting is too large to stand over, lean it against the house instead.)

Cameras with better lenses will capture better quality images of your art, but there can be variations in temperature that are hard to manage without professional lighting and know-how. And, in my own experience, the clarity and crispness of the tiny details always seems to fall short through a camera (at least with pastel anyway.) Usually, a good camera photo will be sufficient for an image posted online, what with all the variances in other people's monitors anyway, but I really prefer a scan when I want to make a print.

To show you an example of a painting that I photographed and also scanned, here's "BFF" (16x16 in.) in both images. The slightly warmer image on the left was from the photo. The other is much more accurate tone and clarity (scanned.)

This is even more noticeable at full resolution, which you can see in the cropped images below (click and zoom in for a better comparison.)

Large Pastels on Small Scanner?

And yes, the scanner is just a normal desktop size, but with larger work I scan in sections and splice it together in Photoshop. I actually lay the scanner on the floor, move the painting carefully between scans without dragging, and wipe off the glass every few scans. (A heavy book comes in handy when weighting edges and corners to keep the large painting on the scanner bed.) It is labor intensive but still MUCH cheaper than going somewhere that has one of those huge flatbed scan things. (It's also much easier when working on a stable surface like gatorboard or some other board. A large work on paper would really need to be mounted on a firm surface to keep it flat over the scanner.)

Here is what one of my large paintings look like right after I scan it, and before it's put together. Each of the separate parts is one scanned area. In Photoshop this would be 16 separate layers.

The extra section with the nibbling ear is the first section I scanned. I always start with an area that has the highest contrast so that the scanner can get the greatest range of lights and darks accurately metered. I also overlap each section to give myself leeway when assembling the whole. (And also because when the painting is face down on a scan bed, it's hard to see where its scanning! So I move it in short increments to be doubly sure I'm not missing any parts.)

Then, after it's all put together (that might be info for another post...) ...Voila! A 300dpi full-sized image ready to print.

Gallery Talk and Reception in Rockport, Texas

Last Saturday, May 16, was the Reception and Gallery Talk for my show Beauty of the Beast and multi-media artist Billy Keen's show Sacred Voices, at the Rockport Center for the Arts, in Rockport, Texas.
Billy has the Main Gallery,

and my work is showing in the Garden Gallery, the lovely room added in 2000 to this historic building.

Lisa Baer of Estelle Stair Gallery and Taylor Hendrix (Director of Operations at the Art Center) did a fabulous job hanging the shows. If you have the opportunity to visit the Center in person, it will be well worth it!

The Gallery Talk, hosted by Lisa, was a lot less stressful than I had feared (sitting in front of dozens of people and speaking!) thanks to Lisa's thoughtful conversational guidance. And I was lucky enough to loan my camera to a volunteer who caught the whole thing on video!

Here it is, after 3 days of editing in Windows Movie Maker. I added still shots of the shows at the end of the video talk, and found some beautiful music to accompany. Enjoy!

(I tried to update the thumbnail to a not-so-blurry shot, but it's stuck on this one! Two or three blurry moments in the whole thing, and it had to pick one for the thumbnail! Huh.)


Here are some more shots below...

Billy's show:

And mine:

Reception Night:

Before the Talk

Me and Billy

The HVAA Show and my Trip to Connecticut

My painting "Audrey with Flowers at Seven" is in the Hudson Valley Art Association's 81st Annual Juried Exhibition. I was notified last week that I won the Art Spirit Foundation Dianne B. Bernhard Award for Excellence in Pastel (which is the highest pastel award they give!) and since I had no other event on my schedule for the weekend, made a spur-of-the-moment decision to use the award money to fly up for the reception, which was Friday, June 21.

I invited my daughter along, which, I admit, pushed the expenses over the award amount, but it was worth it. After all, without her there would be no painting!

The reception was well-attended with many guests who looked like serious buyers. I took many more photos of the show; you can see them all in my Facebook album here.

 Saturday we relaxed in the best way we could think of in a place with 80 degree temperatures and 60% humidity. We took a walk in the park!
Well, two walks in two parks actually.

 The first was Wadsworth Falls State Park. The falls were nice, but I was more excited about the water close-ups with rocks and reflections. I might have enough shots now to continue an old series.

 We didn't see a lot of wildlife, except for the hundreds of baby toads that littered the pathway, trying their best to trip us up. We had to step carefully!

 We saw two trees that had been marked as popular memorials. They were eerily beautiful. There were only two that we saw.

A pretty park with a funny name, Machimoodus State Park began with a lily pond.

Everything's bigger in Texas.. ...except for the trees, which are bigger in Connecticut! (Or taller, anyway.)

 I found many more lovely references for my ongoing "Park Trail" Series...

...And while looking out for the baby toads, my eyes were intrigued by the patterns of leaf shadows on the path... Perhaps food for a new series? Hmmm.

All together a creative weekend for me and my camera. Now back to the easel!
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What Inspires?

I received an email request from a young student of art named Rosie today, and my reply became something I thought I'd like to share. Here's her email to me, and my reply:

Hello, I am year 11 student at the Kings Academy, and I am currently studying gcse art there and the topic I'm doing is based on close ups. When I came across some of your work it inspired me to base my work on animals. I would like it if you found the time to help me, my question to you is, what inspired you? Why did you choose to base your work on what you did? Thank you for your time, I really appreciate you took your time to read this.

Hi Rosie,

I'm glad you found my work inspiring!

I consider myself one of the lucky people who can find inspiration in almost anything. In fact I frequently wish I could live several lives just to have enough time to paint everything I've ever thought about painting. My current and recent subject matter evolved as a result of a lot of things, but mostly from some specific advice of an experienced artist mentor, and a lucky client purchase.

The artist Sara Eyestone gives the advice in a 'business of art' workshop: to work in a series. She says pick a subject/genre and a consistent dimensional size (ie: 2/3 ratio rectangle, or a square, etc) and create at least 20 paintings in this similar theme. This way, when you have an exhibit, it will all look great hung in the same room of a gallery, or at an art fair. And since the dimensions are the same, you can choose the best 12 and print a calendar.

Well, I hadn't yet really chosen my subject for a series when a large (24x24) longhorn painting sold to a client at an art fair. I told him about another cow painting the same size that I had at a gallery in a nearby town. He went to see it that same weekend, and bought it. (These were the first cow paintings I had ever done!)

Well, then I thought, "I'll have to paint more cows!" And I've been painting cows for the past 3 years or more. Being a practical sort of business-person as well as an artist, I do find that my subject matter is driven by what sells. But I do believe that choosing a specific subject or genre and creating a unified body of work creates an appeal with clients, looks much better at shows and fairs, and can also indicate a seriousness of purpose as a dedicated artist that more serious collectors will appreciate.

I haven't limited my subjects to just animals; I also do portraits and landscapes. I do like to work in series whenever I can, especially when working small (you can see a lot of my 'mini-series' of small paintings throughout by blog posts of the past 2 years) I've done seagulls, sunsets, ranch roads, Renaissance portraits, small watercolor road sketches, etc... and of course, the 5x7 cows and other animals - over 200 now!

I believe what specifically led to the small cow 'portraits' was the continued sales of cow paintings, and the knowledge that smaller, less expensive paintings are what sell better. I had first tried a couple of 6x8 cow paintings, but to work that small with the entire body didn't appeal to me, so, being a portrait artist by nature, I settled in to doing some 4x6's of just the 'portrait' area of the cow - head and chest. These migrated to 5x7's and stuck! At some art fairs I would paint new ones at my easel to pass the time, and would sell them almost before they were finished! Nothing like instant sales to inspire more paintings!

A funny thing happens when you commit to one subject for such a length of time and through so many paintings. What began as a business decision because of good sales, became slowly over time a real fascination with the cow. I've learned more about cows (like what breeds are what) since I've been painting them than I ever knew before. And there's something about them, their curiosity, their various personalities (Longhorns will ignore you; large herds of Brahmans are skittish; small mixed herds are the best because they're friendly and curious.) And since I take all my own reference photos, my experience of 'being there' watching, observing and learning has been able to add something to my experience of painting them over these years.

Well, maybe this is more than you needed, but I hope it helps! Good luck with your art!

Rita