Moo Cows

Spice of Life ©2009 Karen Mathison Schmidt
12 x 12 x 1 • acrylic on cradled Gessobord

SOLD • private collection, The Plains, Virginia

I love painting cows. Well, not painting the actual cows, but painting pictures of them.

Although now that I think of it, painting the actual cows might be kind of fun. With non-toxic paint of course.

This painting is a bit of a departure for me, color-wise. The day was lightly overcast, calling for a softer palette than I usually use. There’s always a wide variety of cow colors and shapes in Farmer Mike’s pasture across the road. I love these cows. The way they move around in different arrangements, always a pretty picture. Sometimes after watching them for a while I think that the way they keep rearranging themselves into different groupings seems almost choreographed. Like a big ballet of some kind.

A really, really slow, lumbering pasture ballet.

And here are some close-up details:

Happy 4th of July!

Sunnyside Up ©2009 Karen Mathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on Gessobord

SOLD • private collection, Leonding, Austria

Another one from the sunflower patches in Gilliam, Louisiana. I usually don’t like depicting outdoor subjects at midday, in full sun ... like most artists, photographers and film makers, I prefer the “magic hours” of early morning, late afternoon or dusk, when the natural light and shadows are more dramatic and fleeting. But the color of these sunflowers against that summer sky was just irresistible!

This afternoon we’re going over to my parents’ for hamburgers and such. I had to break the news to the dogs this morning that we won’t be doing sparklers this year because of the drought. The pasture is really dry, and we certainly don’t want everything going up in smoke!

I gave them all a couple of extra Milkbones at lunch time to make up for it.

Have a happy and safe 4th of July, everyone!


Brushwork details:






Work-in-progress photos:

Enough is as good as a feast

Sunflower ©2009 Karen Mathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on Gessobord

SOLD • private collection, Arroyo Grande, California

Last Thursday I drove with my friends Sandra and Ramona to Gilliam, Louisiana (north of Shreveport ... if you get to Arkansas, you’ve gone too far), where the Sunflower Festival was to be held on that weekend. We were anticipating seeing acres and acres of sunflowers, as Sandra had remembered from a couple of years ago when driving through that area, so I had made sure to charge up my camera battery and pack some extra memory cards, and Sandra had even brought her laptop along in case we needed to download photos to make more room in our cameras.

Well, there must be more income in corn than sunflowers these days, because what we found was acres and acres of corn, with a few smallish patches of sunflowers tucked here and there. Oh, well, it was fun anyway, just spending the afternoon with good friends. Sandra and I spent almost an hour taking photos of one little patch of sunflowers, while Ramona just tried to stay cool in the shade and enjoy the view.

It’s probably just as well that there weren’t acres and acres of these sunny beauties, or else we might still be there!

Here are my work in progress photos:

The first sketch, in purple and vermilion:



Blocking in some shadow areas with purple, then a fuschia glaze over the entire painting:



Starting to add opaque color to the petals:




Filling in the sky with a mixture of cobalt and pthalo blues with some white, painting with energy, but loosely so that the fuschia underpainting shows through in places:



And here are some close-up details: