Another Charcoal Pour Bird Painting!

"Deep in Thought"

Here is the finished painting that I demoed for the workshop last weekend in Bethel, MN.  Below is the painting 3/4 finished.   When I am at this point in a painting, I ask myself many design questions, in order to complete the painting.
 1. Do I have a dominant value?  In order to see that, I take a black and white photo of my painting.  Then I see the values of each color. In this case, the lights and medium values were equal, so I decided to add more aqua collage paper.
2.  Have I linked the center of interest to the sides of the paper?
3.  Repeating the busy shapes within the bird by adding the stripes on the side is a good idea!
4. Cropping the picture so that the bird isn't right in the middle of the painting.
5. Added shadows under the feet.
6. Worked on details of the eyes.
By the way, the aqua colored paper was handmade by painting on deli paper and stenciling layers of different colored paint after the main first layer of paint.  To read more about how to do the charcoal pour, go to Virginia Cobb's book, Discovering the Inner Eye.  I absolutely LOVE this process! 

Another Bird Painting

Home, Sweet Home
This was my demonstration painting for the home studio workshop for the Charcoal Pour technique.  This painting is lots more busy than my last one.  Which one do you like better?  The students did fabulous paintings, and loved the process of the charcoal pour.  I'm really excited to paint lots more birds!

Funky Bird, using charcoal powder



"Dressed to the Nines"

This painting started with a charcoal pour. This process is discussed in the Virginia Cobb book, Discovering the Inner Eye, Experiments in Watermedia.   It is available for $150, unframed.  Image size:  11" x 11".  I love the texture that the charcoal creates.  Then I added fun by collaging the feathers, using all kinds of busy collage papers.   My home studio workshop went fantastic.  By limiting the students to only 10, we all got to know each other so well, and there was lots of individual help.  Their paintings were so beautiful! I'm definitely painting lots more birds in the future.  They are so fun, when they are whimsical!

Creating texture with Charcoal Powder, Birch Trees

This painting, Roots and Rocks, #1, is image size 11" x 15".   I'm preparing for my next home studio workshop, "Graphite Pours to Create Texture".  This painting started using charcoal powder and then pouring a big bucket of water on the paper!  This process is explained in Virginia Cobb's book, Discovering the Inner Eye, Experiments in Watermedia .  I love textures and I find that starting with texture on the paper, leads to inspiration for completing the painting.  It was fun to go back to traditional painting for a change.  But tomorrow, it's back to abstracts!

Going down Memory Lane

As usual, I'm late in painting my Christmas card.  I've started 2 different paintings for this purpose, and didn't finish either one of them.  Then, looking through my finished paintings, I liked this painting because it reminded me of my roots.  I grew up on a ranch in Montana, and our Christmas celebrations were very simple, with handmade construction paper chains and popcorn that trimmed our tree.  Of course, the tree was a real tree.  Dad would drive us through the hills on our ranch, and we'd pick our favorite tree each year. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm going to try to keep this holiday more simple and remember the special traditions of my earlier years.  Happy Holidays to all of you! 
By the way, this painting started with charcoal sprinkled on the paper, and then pouring a big bucket of water on the charcoal to create the wonderful texture.  I'll be teaching this process at my workshop at Madeline Island on August 6 - 10, 2012.  Go to my website for details.  http://www.karenknutson.com/