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Forest Painting Video

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-02-26T09:32:02-08:00

I'm finished my speed painting video of the surreal forest painting from yesterday. The painting is titled "Heartwood" and measures 24"x30". I'll have the prints in my Etsy store soon. Here's the video:

You'll see I had a bit of trouble getting the lighting consistent throughout the video but I'm working on that. When I started the painting, I had made sort of a crude mockup of what I wanted in Photoshop, but the painting evolves thoughout the process into something different. The center area darkens and the tent becomes smaller and more central.

Surreal Forest Painting

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-02-25T12:42:15-08:00

I'm finished my newest surreal landscape painting with a tent. This painting was inspired by a scary night we spent on the amazing West Coast Trail in the temperate rainforest of Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

My husband Travis and I are experienced backpackers and were well prepared for the week-long trek, but a big storm tested our limits one night. After fording frigid streams and walking all day in pouring rain that seeped through our raingear, I got hypothermia and began to hallucinate as we tried to get to shelter after dark. Fortunately we made it out safely without having to be rescued. This trail is one of the most awe-inspring places I have ever been. I wanted this painting to evoke the fear and magic we felt in this ancient forest and the way the woods seem like they can swallow you up.
I filmed video of the painting in progress, which I will post shortly. I have been working on incorporating more colors into my landscapes and getting away from realism a bit more to make the paintings more emotional.

This painting is for sale in my Surreal Landscapes gallery for $895. You can purchase prints from my Etsy shop starting at $12.00.

Finished Pug Portrait with Video

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-02-04T20:38:44-08:00

I'm finished my portrait of the beautiful Sandy. I filmed a video of the process and sped it up into a two-minute time lapse painting set to music. You'll recognize the music from the awesome ballet scene with the hippos and alligators in the original Fantasia movie from 1940. I loved it when I was a little kid and used to dance to it on my rebounder in front of the TV.

I've been working on making my videos faster and shorter, and I trimmed this one down to a lean 1:54 to fit the music. What do you think of the shorter lengths of my videos? If you've got an opinion, leave a comment at the bottom of the post. Here's the video:
Next, I painted in the basic colors and shapes of the background, and made some slight adjustments to her body.

Finally, I added the contours in her bed to make her look like she's sinking in a little bit. To make the contours I added alternating lines of light and dark blues and whites from my sidemix. I wrote her name on her tag with my tiny detail brush. Here's the finished portrait:

There's a summary of the whole process in the new portrait demo section on my main site.

Major Site Upgrades

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-02-03T12:43:35-08:00

I've got two major upgrades to my sites to announce on my portrait site BealsStudios.com, and my landscape site KathrynBeals.com.

1) I've added a big tutorial and demonstration section to my portrait site:

The new section has advice on getting started painting on a budget. There are painting tutorials such as how to blend paint and how to paint eyes. I've also got many detailed portrait tutorials. You'll recognize some of the articles from early posts on this blog. I decided to revamp them into a more permanent resource on my site.

2) On my landscape site, I've added five galleries of backpacking photos to the About the Artist section. Travis and I take many photos on our backcountry trips, and these landscapes provide much of the inspiration behind my paintings.

Pug Portrait in Progress

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-02-03T12:24:02-08:00

I've been working on my portrait of Sandy the Pug. Sandy has such a great smile. I'm creating a video of Sandy's progress, and I've taken several stills from the video to show the painting in action. However, there's no progress on me learning to keep my big head out of the shot...

Here's the pink and purple underpainting:

Next, I painted in the blackest areas on her face. Portraits always look so strange without the eyes painted in.

Next, I started on her fur. I used a mixture of mostly Titan Buff, with a bit of Burnt Umber mixed in in places to make it darker. I thinned it out so that the purple would show through slightly.

I used my smaller round brush to work on the details of her face some more. The likeness is getting better now. I added her purple collar. I've roughed in the details in her body, but I'm going to paint in the background before doing any detail on the paws.

Drawings for the book

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-02-01T12:07:01-08:00

I've been slowly working on drawings and sketch composites for a children's book written by my father-in-law. I'm glad to get practice drawing, which is more difficult for me than painting. The story features a family that runs a small wildlife rescue shelter in the country. The protagonist is a ferret who narrates the first and last chapters.

The two little girls in the story help their pregnant mom with the animal care. Here are a few drawings I'm working on, one of the sisters bottle feeding an otter, and both girls helping their mom feed the birds:

I'm working on developing a family likeness between the two girls and their mother. It's been difficult getting good pictures of the sketches, since my lighting setup is optimized for paintings, and the sketches are much more sensitive to uneven light because of the white background. However, I just got a scanner for the drawings and I'm in the process of setting it up.

Sandy the Pug - Sketch

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-01-21T09:38:11-08:00

I've been commissioned to paint a portrait of Sandy - a Pug, and one of my fellow Canadians. Here's Sandy:

I'll be adjusting this photo a bit to reflect Sandy's characteristic pose and look. In my rough pose sketch, I tilted her head to the side and adjusted her legs and backside to capture the way she usually sits. I did this by using my new Photoshop skills to combine several photos of Sandy. On the left is her characteristic sitting pose, in the middle is her head tilt, and on the right is a reference photo that includes her feet, since they are cropped out of the other pictures. Isn't she cute?

In Photoshop, I combined characteristics from each photo. I selected the areas I wanted to copy, cleaned up the edges using the Magic Wand Tool, and then selected the white area around the body part. I then used the Inverse Selection command to select the body part with a transparent background. I then copied the selected area and pasted her face from the first picture and paws onto the body photo. I used the Free Transform command to scale the pasted layers to the appropriate size and angle, and then selected Merge Visible Layers to collapse the image into one layer.

Here's the sketch I made from my combination of reference photos:

As usual with my portrait sketches, this is just a rough line drawing to check the pose, so it doesn't look like Sandy yet. Now that I'm happy with the pose, I can get started on the painting. This portrait reminds me a bit of my painting of Fig Newton a few years ago.

Photoshop Sketch Composites

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-01-12T10:47:06-08:00

While I prefer traditional paint and canvas as my medium, I have learned that Photoshop is a powerful tool for trying out compositions and combining sketches. I'm working on illustrating a children's book that requires many complex scenes with a lot of characters and detail. I have drawn some small black and white character drawings which will be inserted into the text to capture individual moments and expressions. For each chapter, I plan to have a large painted scene which incorporates everyone. I am going for the storybook feel of this painting; not photo-realistic, but lots of details to examine. I loved large illustrations as a kid.

In this scene, the girls in the story are preparing to go outside to play in the yard. Their pregnant mom is cleaning the house and packing for a move. Queen Ferret, the central narrator and comic relief figure, is doing her best to cause trouble.

I started with these sketches (click on images to see larger versions):

I wanted the scene to be in a kitchen or hallway of a house, but I experimented with several backdrops before deciding on which to use.

To start, I found a photo of a kitchen that I liked, and an image of of a stack of moving boxes. I modified my sketch of the ferret pulling a sock out of a drawer into a drawing of her stealing something from an open box.

It was tricky finding a kitchen with the right perspective (from just under counter height, since the girls are sitting on the floor) but I eventually found one I liked and converted it into a grayscale sketch-type image using the Desaturate and Filter Gallery (Poster Edges) commands. I did the same thing to the stack of boxes and window image.

Next is the part I wish I had known when I did the glider painting, since perspective drawing has never been my strong suit. I took each of my sketches and cut out the backgrounds using the Magic Wand Tool, selecting the background and then inverting the selection to select the object only. I copied and pasted the images onto my kitchen image. Each pasted image went into a new layer. Next, I used the Free Transform command to scale, flip and rotate the pasted images into a composition that I liked. When I started, I wasn't sure if I would prefer to have the girls in the background or foreground, where to put the ferret, or how big each character should be in relation to the other. I shuffled the layers around to overlap the characters. Here's what I came up with as my painting mockup:

I extended the right edge and ceiling of the kitchen using the Clone Stamp tool on the background, and added a window showing the girls' backyard. I want to put a small detail into the backyard to tie into the story, but I haven't decided on one yet.

I think I liked this composition best because of the triangular layout that ties the characters together. The hillside in the window points down at the mother's face, her mop points towards the ferret, and the ferret faces the girls. The older sister's body angles back up at the mother.

As you can see, the goal is not to create an attractive drawing, but to experiment with composition in a quick and easy way prior to investing a lot if time. Had I been doing the composite sketch on paper, I would have had to erase and redraw each character every time I changed my mind. Now that I have my composite, I will transfer the basic lines to my canvas and paint it as a large full-color painting.

Tying Shoes

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-01-07T14:20:33-08:00

I've been working on my illustrations for a children's book. The story features a young family going through a difficult time before the birth of a new baby. I did some sketches of my pregnant sister for the mother figure. The comic relief figure is a ferret who considers herself the queen of the household.

The young girls in the story are learning to tie shoes, so I needed several illustrations of shoe tying. I have a very difficult time with both hands and shoes in general, so this was doubly hard. However, I have two that I'm happy with :

Here's Queen Ferret overseeing the shoe tying. This sketch has less detail because I am thinking of using it to make a painting for the cover.

Island Lake Sunset Video

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2009-12-22T09:01:10-08:00

Since I usually do portraits, I've been enjoying the change of pace with the landscape commissions I've had lately. This is my video of the painting of the Ontario sunset: