Friday, January 9, 2015

Day 10- 30 Paintings in 30 Days!

"We hold the world in our hands"  11" x 11"  $245 SOLD
Watercolor, permanent marker, and Elegant Writer marker

Yes, I truly believe that each and every one of us makes a difference in our world!  I had this idea of a girl holding the globe in her hands and really enjoyed painting this.  Last year, one of my students (who happens to be a teacher herself in Duluth, MN), Mary Beth Downs taught me how to do "wire drawings".
 At least that's what I call them.  That's because they look like wire to me.  I can't tell you how to do them on this blog; it's actually something that you have to see.  Basically, they are contour drawings with changes afterwards. This will be a process that I will teach in one of my summer workshops if you are interested. (email me to be on the list:  Karen@karenknutson.com )  I use a permanent marker to do the initial sketch picture below.  When I started this, I honestly thought that this would be an easy painting, and picked it, due to babysitting my sick grandson this morning.  But the finishing touches took hours.  I used the Elegant Writer calligraphy pen to make some of the lines thicker and then activated it with a wet brush to cause it to soften a little.  Elegant writer felt markers are water soluble and therefore are really fun to mess around with!  Karlyn Holman introduced me to the Elegant Writer pens years ago, and I love them.  Click on this link to buy them from her store.  One of my heroes is Alphonse Mucha, and I was trying to do this painting in his style.  A lot of doodling, but it was worth it!

 
Value sketch (left) and first drawing using permanent marker (right)


5 comments:

  1. Mistakenly placed this comment on # 9 which is also very lovely
    Love this and the sketches as well.... really love seeing work in progress...

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  2. I like this one. Like the colors and the concept.

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  3. Very cool painting, and thanks for sharing the info on the Elegant Writer pens.

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  4. Beautiful! I love the limited palette and the contour drawing. We used to do something like that at life drawing class. Looking at the figure, never at the paper and not taking the pen from the paper. The results can be lovely.

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  5. I love this! It's inspiring me to do some contour drawing.

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