RSS Feed

Surreal Landscape Painting Video

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2011-06-27T21:05:46-07:00

As you may have guessed, this blog is on hiatus while I enjoy my baby son. I've finally gotten around to finishing the video I filmed just 12 hours before my labor began:

The painting idea came to me in a dream I had while approaching my due date. The birth turned out to be harder than I could have ever imagined, but after 55 hours of labor my son was born healthy and strong. After using the painting as a focal point through hundreds of contractions, this scene is inextricably mixed with my memory of birth. It's now one of my very favorite paintings, although the mere sight of it made me feel sick for a few weeks afterward because it brought it all back so vividly.

The painting, entitled Origin, is not for sale but prints are available for purchase in my print store.

New Surreal Landscape Painting

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-11-27T18:51:10-08:00

This is my newest surreal landscape painting, still untitled:

I am taking several months off painting to have a baby, due any day now. I had a dream several weeks ago that the baby was at the top of a mountain, and I had to go on a long hike to get him. The scenery in the dream painting is loosely based on a section of the Pacific Crest Trail in the high Sierra mountains of California that my husband and I backpacked a few years ago. On one memorable stretch we spent a long two days hiking towards what looked like an impossible climb over a high mountain pass.

I filmed the painting for a video, which I will post in the new year. Here's a still:

Happy Holidays!

Emily's Finished Portrait

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-11-01T13:30:37-07:00

I'm finished moving into my new studio and getting ready to take a few months off to have my baby. Before I do, I wanted to show Emily's finished portrait. Emily is a lovely Chow mix from California. After combining photos in a sketch and painting her face and body, I began to shade in a blue background. When choosing a background color, I find it's helpful to start with a gradient of color (in this case, white and Ultramarine Blue) and see what shade works best before proceeding. In this case, the lighter blue worked better with Emily's coat.

The wonderful thing about acrylic paints is that it's so easy to paint over other layers when making adjustments. A drying time of 20 minutes or so is all that's needed. I applied a shaded lighter blue to the whole background.

Emily needed some final adjustments to improve the likeness. Because I changed the shoulder pose of the original photo, I had to look at some sitting poses of Emily to get her neck and shoulders right. I slimmed down her neck and defined her shoulders by painting over the edges with the blue background paint. Next, I touched up the edges of her shoulders to make them darker and more three-dimensional. Here's Emily's finished portrait:

Emily in Progress

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-09-01T19:45:54-07:00

I'm working on a portrait of Emily:

In this portrait, I'm bringing a black and white photo into color. I did this once before in a portrait of a woman a few years ago. Since Emily has yellow tones in her coat, I started with a purple underpainting:

Next, I painted the golden tones over top. I used Yellow Ochre, Titan Buff and a bit of Burnt Umber mixed with white. When I converted the original sketch to a headshot pose, I realized that I needed to adjust some things as I went. I started with her eyes looking too small, since the sketch didn't really capture the dark areas around her eyes. The face also looks too wide due to the original pose, so I painted over some of the layers around her face. Later, these will be covered completely by the background.

Once I fixed the edges of the eyes and added the black under her nose, the portrait started to look more like Emily. Here she is with more layers of yellow and brown:

I added the tongue and refined the dark areas in her eyebrows with more layers. Next, I'll start on the finer detail to bring out the texture of her fur.

Life Imitates Art

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-09-11T16:07:14-07:00

In between portraits, I've been slowly putting together illustrations for a book my father-in-law wrote last year. The book is about a family preparing for a move while awaiting the birth of a new baby. Now that I'm very pregnant myself, and also moving into a new home, I can appreciate the mother in the story more:

While the mother character in the book is modeled after my own mom, these illustrations are actually based on my sister, who had her baby last year and took some pictures of herself doing household chores to help me out. Before my own pregnancy, it was hard for me to visualize how a pregnant lady would carry a box or a bucket. I have a better idea now.

Needless to say, things have been busy around here, and I haven't made any new posts or videos recently. However, I've got several paintings in the works right now, and I hope to show them off soon.

Dachshund Portrait, Finished

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-08-02T12:02:28-07:00

I'm finished my portrait of Dogster contest winner Bear, a beautiful rescued senior dachshund. Dogster's contest on the Dog Blog paid tribute to senior dogs. Here's Bear's finished painting:

I tried to capture the lovely white "frosting" on Bear's face, which is visible in the original photo. Here's a 2 minute video of Bear's painting from start to finish:

At about 0:52 you can see a closeup of Bear's eyes being painted. I'll be posting progress shots with detailed descriptions soon. Congratulations Bear!

Leave No Trace Article

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-07-19T18:48:47-07:00

I'm featured in the July 2010 newsletter of Leave No Trace! Read the article here.

Leave No Trace is an international nonprofit dedicated to environmental stewardship via access and education. If you've visited one of the National Parks you've probably seen their info on how to minimize your impact while enjoying the backcountry. Travis and I have been long time supporters of their work, and we donate 10% of the profits from my card sales to Leave No Trace.

You can also look through our backpacking photos and see the places we visit that inspire my paintings.

Dachshund Portrait in Progress

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-06-29T18:51:37-07:00

I'm back from traveling and I've been working on my portrait of Bear the dachshund from Dogster. Here are Bear's original photos:

I experimented with several poses, and decided on a square headshot portrait. I made a quick sketch of Bear, then transferred my sketch to the canvas and began filling in the underlying layers of her coat.

I've been filming video of the process, which I will post as a speed painting when the painting is done. I've posted some stills from the video below.

I almost always use a purple or pink underpainting to bring out the depth in dogs' coats. For Bear, I used a mixture of Dioxazine Purple and Violet Oxide, which is a brownish purple. I marked in the areas of high contrast around her face, and begin painting in her eyes and nose.

After mapping in the overall proportions of her face, I made a brown mixture for her fur. This mixture will almost completely cover the purple, leaving only hints of it behind, but the purple layer also serves as guide for me so I don't distort the proportions.

With the brown and light areas mapped in, I started on the detail. This early stage of the painting should be done very quickly, with a big brush, so you don't get carried away with details. The idea is to map out the whole figure first, then start on detail.
Now that the overall shape of Bear's face is blocked in, I will switch to a smaller brush and begin work on her eyes.

Print Store Now Open

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-05-23T20:07:29-07:00

We've launched the new print store! We're now offering higher quality borderless digital prints in three sizes and two finishes in our new online store. Online orders are fulfilled by SmugMug and are usually shipped within 24 hours.

Print Prices:

8" x 10" - $16.00
11" x 14" - $30.00
16" x 20" - $64.00

Congratulations Bear!

kathryn@bealsstudios.com — 2010-05-11T18:47:07-07:00

Rescued Dachshund Bear is the winner of the Dogster Dog Blog's contest celebrating senior dogs. Bear's family will receive one of my custom 16"x20" portraits.

Here's a photo of Bear, although her family may choose a different photo for the portrait:

You can read her touching adoption story on the Dog Blog. I will be on vacation starting next week, but Bear's portrait and video will be completed after I return in June.