Day 22 of 30 Paintings in 30 Days!

"Summer Day"      $75
Waterccolor        7" x 10"

I'm really enjoying painting sunflowers.  This one makes me think that there is a gentle breeze on a summer day.  I can almost feel the wind blowing by the flowers.  The process of this painting is to wet the entire sheet of paper, then work as fast as you can to paint the petals, leaving a little bit at the tip in white.  Remember, you are working on a WET sheet of paper, so the color "Spreads" really fast.  Then, I negative paint, using a dark thicker mixture of paint.  to carve out the edge of the flowers.  This usually takes at least 3 coats to get dark enough, with rewetting, etc.  I enjoyed the looseness of these sunflowers.  Fun to paint, but the timing had to be perfect. 

#20 of 30 Paintings in 30 Days!

"Sunny Side Up"      $75
Watercolor      7" x 10"

These wet into wet watercolors are much faster to do than the watercolor collages and figurative paintings, so you might be seeing a few more of these, cuz I'm running out of steam for this challenge.  This painting started like the other ones, using a toilet paper roll for the underpainting.  I love the random line work in the finished piece. I forgot to take a picture of that beginning, but if you go back to my blog from February 14th , you will see how this discovery was made!  The main thing I have to remember as I'm doing this painting is to keep layering with the darks.  Look at the photo below when the painting was in the middle stage.  Quite a difference when the dark values are painted and then the sunflowers start to pop!

Day 16 of 30 Paintings in 30 Days!

"Lone Sunflower"    $75
Watercolor      10" x 7" image

Today was such a special day, where I again tried my hand at plein air painting with another group near Venice, FL.  This time, we were on a private farm where there were countless opportunities for great painting ideas.   I really enjoyed myself and again met many new artist friends.  So, the day went by without time to paint my challenge painting for the day.
Before I knew it, the time was 7:00 p.m., so I took the easy way out and painted another loose sunflower.  These paintings only take about 1 1/2 hours to paint, but the timing is such that it can fail really quickly if you're not careful.  This painting again started with my new special technique, where I used a toilet paper roll to get special effects  Read how this happened on Day 14's blog post.  Then I worked wet into wet and painted really fast to keep the loose fuzzy edges.

Step One

Day 14 of 30 Paintings in 30 Days!

I've been painting side by side with my friends, Karlyn Holman and Tammy Kennen for the past couple of days.  Karlyn paints much more loosely than I do, and so I decided to do a "loosey goosey" painting.  I asked if anyone had a brayer so I could so some fun linework.  No one did, so I got inventive and decided to use the side of a toilet paper roll!  The marks that it made were so fun.  I think I will teach a class with this technique!  (The picture is below)  Look closely at the painting above and you will see the linework that was in the first layer.  I painted mostly in the "wet in wet "technique.  Fun to do!

Paintings with the same value patterns

"Wheels of Imagination, #2"   6" x 6" image
11" x 11" framed,   $145 framed

Sorry it's been so long since I have blogged.  It's been a busy teaching schedule and it's hard to keep up with everything!  Check out my website for future workshops!
Squint and you will see my simple light pathway in the little abstract painting above.  I am preparing for a solo exhibition at the WaterWorks Art Museum in Miles City, MT, and my plan is to have several groupings of paintings, both abstract and traditional that have the same original design and the same color scheme.  My show runs from October 15 - November 10th.  I will also be teaching a workshop in Miles City from October 16 - 18, 2017.  Contact DeNice Curry at (406) 234-0635 or email:  ccartc@midrivers.com if interested.  You can check out my website, www.karenknutson.com for the details of the workshop.
My students all know how passionate I am about creating a light pathway for every painting.  Below is a floral that I used the same light value pattern.  Can you see it?  I can't recommend this strongly enough for creating a good design in your paintings.

"Never too Late for Lilies"  11" x 14" image,
16" x 20" framed,   $345 framed