The Last Pecans ... at last!

The Last Pecans ©2010 by Karen Mathison Schmidt
30 x 24 x 2 • acrylic on 2" cradled Gessobord
sides painted burnt umber • unframed
gloss varnish

SOLD

Here’s a large painting of my Dad walking back to the house after squeezing a couple more buckets full of pecans from the trees in the south pasture a few weeks ago.

I love working on larger boards, even though it takes a little longer. It’s easy to overwork a large painting, though. I keep having to remind myself to keep it loose!

This one has lots of color layers, especially in the foreground, where I used a combination of palette knife and brushes.

Here are some brushwork details:

I love painting.

WORK IN PROGRESS ...



I love to paint. I love painting animals. I love painting flowers.

But I especially love painting landscapes.

This one is bigger than my usual: 30 x 24 inches. It’s a picture of the overflowing pond out in the north pasture across our road, with the tall grasses along the roadside in the foreground. I think the finished painting will look a lot different from this progress photo. I’ll just have to see where this one takes me ...

Have a happy and safe Halloween!

Bailey, international cat of mystery

Birdwatching by Karen Mathison Schmidt
18 x 24 • acrylic on cradled Gessobord

I finished this one in February for Acrylic Secrets. You can see my step by step process in the book; the editors gave me a six-page spread for this one!

I had a lot of fun painting Bailey in this large format. I’m pretty sure she likes the finished piece, too, because while I had it sitting in my office she kept posing in front of it.

Here’s a snippet from a conversation we had while I was working on the painting:

Me: I wonder if I should have gone with the 9 x 12 board. This one is pretty big.

Bailey: Darling, when it comes to a picture of me, bigger is always better.


Me: You know, you should be honored that I chose you for the subject of this one -- this picture is going in a book that’s supposed to be distributed in four countries.

Bailey: Excellent. It’s about time the world knew of my beauty.


Ah, Bailey. So beautiful. So modest. Gotta love her!

Only God can make a tree ...

Oak Tree on a September Morning © Karen Mathison Schmidt
20 x 16 x 1 • acrylic on cradled Gessobord
sides painted dark umber
SOLD • private collection, Germantown, Tennessee

Here's the finished painting. This one has a lot of layered color glazes, and some interesting texture.

Scroll down past the brushwork details to see the work-in-progress photos

And here are the extreme close-up brushwork details:



Here you can see where I used a palette knife to scrape in the suggestion of stems for the flowers:








And here are the work-in-progress photos:

Here you can see a little of the abstract background, over which I've started to block in my composition in blacks and blues:






Here's a close-up view of the flowers in the lower right section of the painting. I added some dark green where I wanted the stems to be, then added a layer of a lighter color and scraped away the lighter paint to show the dark green as the stems of the flowers:

Invasion of the Spider Lilies 2009

Oak Tree on a Foggy Morning WORK IN PROGRESS


After a couple of weeks of hot, steamy thunderstorms, then a day or two of hot, sticky summery days, we woke up yesterday to a deliciously cool fall morning ... and today’s weather is downright perfect!

One sure sign of fall is the spider lilies popping up everywhere. And I do mean popping ... they spring up so fast, I think I could probably take a lawn chair and a cup of hot tea out in the yard and sit and watch them growing. Seriously, while I was out taking these pictures, I was sure I turned around one time and there were a few more than there were before.

OK, now back to work!

20 x 16 x 1 • acrylic on cradled Gessobord

SOLD • private collection, Placitas, New Mexico

These black-eyed susans grow wild, along with the honeysuckle and morning glories, just about everywhere around here in the summer. I love ’em! For this painting I started out with a blending of images from two different locations; one less than a mile from our place,


and the other a few miles farther north. (I flipped the road around for my composition.)


My number one rule when I start a new painting is: Don’t skimp on the amount of time you spend on planning the composition. Sometimes I go a little overboard on this, but it’s really, really difficult to get a strong painting out of a weak composition. Some artists can do their composing as they go, but I am definitely NOT one of those artists. I really have to decide on my subject arrangement right at the beginning.

Which is not to say that I consider the initial arrangement set in stone or anything; I mean, you have to be flexible as you go. You never know when the painting might take on a life of its own and some element of the composition will practically demand to be changed.

Mostly what happens to me, though, is that the color and light change as I go, and I’ll accidentally do something and go, “oh no ... oh, cool ... I think I’ll keep that." I love it when that happens.

A few years ago I spent some time with the local art council teaching kids to paint after school, and I wrote down some of the things they would say about making art. One of my favorites: "I didn’t mean for that part to look like that, but I think it’s kind of cool, so I’m gonna let it stay that way.”

Here are some close-up details of today’s painting:

A Fresh Start

Morning Becomes Annie ©2009 Karen Mathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on Gessobord

SOLD • private collection, Poway, California

(scroll down to the bottom of this post to see brushwork details)

Here’s Annie, in her favorite spot to relax after an early morning breakfast. The way she was backlit by the summer morning sun streaming through the window, she seemed to be absolutely glowing. Our Annie has only had one eye since kittenhood when we found her as a stray, but I give her two eyes when I paint her. She’s usually pretty elusive, having a tendency to flee the immediate vicinity whenever I approach carrying a strangely shaped object (like my camera), but she must have been feeling especially mellow this morning because she let me snap a few photos (from the doorway, with the zoom lens of course) before I tiptoed on my way and left her to her morning meditations. As you can see in this previous painting of Annie, she crosses her front legs the same way whenever she’s kicking back and chilling out. So cute.

I had a hard time with this painting at first. I finished one and was thoroughly unhappy with the way it turned out. It was way too stiff and stilted. Plus, because her little face and her eyes are so round compared to most cats I’ve seen, it was really hard not to make her look like a person made up to look like a cat. Which she totally did in the first painting.

So I called do-overs, took a few minutes to freshen my palette and to pray sincerely for inspiration, and started again. This second painting captures the light much better. And she looks like a cat, too, not a little girl wearing cat make-up (whew!)

Just for fun, here are a few more rare photos of Annie:


Um ... were you planning on serving us our dinner anytime soon?



Here she is on the stairs ...


... making sure that no danger lurks above before she heads up to her favorite spot ...



And here are some close-up details: