Ice Pics

 

I haven’t quite finished preparing and uploading all my progress photos for the cat painting yet, so instead I’m sharing these photos I took yesterday, in the aftermath of the ice storm of Tuesday night. 

Here’s the old oak tree out front. From this angle, with the branches weighed down with ice, they look almost calligraphic. Love this windswept look!

 This thorny vine on the pasture fence looks like some kind of avant grade sculpture.

The pasture gate.

Here are the spider lilies, which bloom in September. We let the leaves grow all winter to feed the bulbs before we mow them around the end of March. That way we’ll have even more blooms next fall.

By noon yesterday all the ice started to melt, and with all the water dripping from tree branches and the roof of the house it sounded like it was raining all afternoon, even though there were just a few clouds left in the sky. Today was absolutely beautiful, if a little chilly, and for the next four or five days the forecast says beautiful warm springlike days with just a bit of rain. Hard to believe that Monday and Tuesday were so wintery -- welcome to Late Winter / Early Spring in the Arklatex!

New Limited Edition prints ...

A snowy, sleety winter night here in the ArkLaTex. I haven’t quite finished with the cat painting, but will try to post the work-in-progress with the finished painting tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here are some new Limited Edition prints which are available here, 

on my website 

and in my eBay store:

Evensong II

Limited Edition Fine Art Print on heavy archival Ultrasmooth fine art paper

Signed & Numbered 
Limited to 25 in each of three sizes

 12 x 9 inches • $45

 16 x 12 inches • $70

 20 x 15 inches • $100

Looking forward

It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!

– MARK TWAIN

SOLD

Afternoon Walk  © 2014 Karen Mathison Schmidt

12 x 9 inches x 7/8 inch deep • oil on museum-quality cradled GessobordTM

private collection • Houston, Texas

Painting this one on the eve of a few more freezing days (and possibly snow on Tuesday!) was my way of looking forward to some beautiful WARM spring days in the hopefully not-too-distant future. 

Tomorrow I will be posting some step-by-step photos of the sleeping cat painting. 

Sweet dreams of spring, and happy painting!

Take the plaid challenge!

Untitled WORK-IN-PROGRESS

24 x 12 inches • oil on 2" deep cradled Gessobord

Here’s where I am on this one today. Lovin’ that plaid blanket!

I used to be really intimidated by trying to paint anything with a plaid pattern. Whenever I would paint a scene with something plaid in it I would make the plaid item solid in my picture. The first time I attempted to actually depict plaid was in this painting of the redbones napping on their favorite blanket:

At first I was just going to make the blanket solid blue. But somewhere during the process I thought, what the hey, why not give the plaid a go? (I was painting with acrylics so I knew I could always paint over it if I didn’t like it. That took a little of the pressure off.) I’m so glad I made the attempt at the plaid. Now I know how much fun it is! 

Here’s my challenge to you artists: 

This week paint something that you’ve always thought was too difficult to attempt, be it an object, a pattern, a texture, a material (wood, glass, etc.), an animal, a person, an eye … whatever. Just let it turn out however it turns out.

Who knows? You may just surprise yourself! 

Faithful in every way.

Thirty minutes ago it was right at freezing outside, with the wind chill making it feel like 25°, and I was walking around the front yard with a teeny lantern, looking for an even teenier bottle of Old Holland Picture Varnish. Now I’m extremely grateful to be back inside with a steaming hot cup of cocoa, and for having the feeling creeping back into my toes.

Why was I walking around the yard at 11:00 at night in the freezing cold looking for picture varnish?

Okay, back up to 4:00 this afternoon. I was expecting a small box of art supplies to be delivered today, and in checking the tracking number on the FedEx website, I read that the package had been delivered and left at the front door. Hooray! I thought, as I headed downstairs to retrieve it. I opened the front door. No package there.

Maybe they left it next door, was my next thought, because neither of our houses which are right next to each other way out here in the country has a house number on it, and if it wasn’t our regular driver then our delivery may have gotten dropped off at our neighbors’, which is closer to the road. So I trekked over to their front porch in search of wayward art supplies.

Hmm. Not there, either.

Well, maybe they left it at the kitchen door.

So I walked back around to the back of our house and there encountered Roadie, having the best time, playing with some pieces of cardboard.

Hey, Roads!

 Whatcha got there?

 Uh-oh.

And no sign of the former contents in sight.

So I walked back around to the front and sure enough …

 … there under the oak tree on the pasture side of the house were the scattered items of my supply order.

I gathered them up and brought them in, and it wasn’t until I was going over the packing slip tonight after I got home from choir rehearsal that I realized the picture varnish that was in the package was still missing. And that little bottle, ounce for ounce, was NOT cheap.

Man.

So I bundled up again and headed out into the blackness with my teensy weency little lantern to see if I could find it and bring it in from the soon-to-be-below-freezing weather. I had to hold the lantern real close to the ground because it wasn’t giving out a whole lot of light, and I walked back and forth and back and forth under that oak tree but to no avail.

Then I decided to start in the middle of my search area and walk around in ever widening circles.

Nothing but leaves and twigs.

Finally, when I couldn’t feel my toes anymore and my face was so cold from the stinging wind that I couldn’t move my facial muscles I thought, well, I better go in. But because I truly believe that God cares about even my smallest concern, I prayed out loud: “Lord, You made all the stars and You call them by name. You know where that varnish is, and I think the only way I’m going to find it tonight is if You show it to me.”

As I turned around to make my way back to the house, I swung the lantern in a wide arc way out to the side, away from the place I had been looking based on where I had found all the other things in the package. Something caught and reflected the beam of light from the lantern, and that something turned out to be bubble wrap.

Which was wrapped around my little missing bottle of varnish.

Hallelujah.

Cat painting in progress

A dreary wintery rainy day -- just the kind of day that makes me want to curl up with a French vanilla coffee and a cozy mystery of the Agatha Christie kind. 

But a French vanilla coffee and a sleeping cat painting is the next best thing, and way more productive.

So I took this one down from the fireplace mantel where it’s been sitting since Christmas eve, set it on the easel, and sat looking at it for a while, sipping my hot coffee. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to go about depicting the texture of the cane chair back. I enlarged my reference photo on my computer to study the texture in extreme close-up. I walked across the room and studied the actual chair. I turned around and sat in the chair, sipping my coffee, closing my eyes and imagining that cane pattern. I walked back over to the easel and stared at the painting, sipping my coffee. I reminded myself that it’s impressionism, not photorealism, so I just need to suggest the pattern and the viewer will fill in the details from experience and know it’s a cane back chair without even giving it a second thought. I’m thinking that’s about when the caffeine started kicking in, because I suddenly knew just how to begin, and I jumped right in. Once I got going my painting time went so smoothly I could hardly believe it when I saw that it was time to stop. I feel like I’m getting the hang of this alla prima thing, and I’m incorporating it into the way I like to build up the color layers loosely over the deeply saturated colors of the underpainting. By the way, the blanket in the painting is a soft multicolored plaid with fringe, so tomorrow should be fun!

Untitled WORK-IN-PROGRESS

24 x 12 inches • oil on 2" deep cradled Gessobord

Another fauvalicious painting

Praise the Lord, my soul!

Praise the Lord, my soul!

All that is within me, the deepest of my being

Praise the Lord, my soul!

Everything that breathes,

All that eyes can see,

Giving testimony to His greatness only,

Bless the Lord, the Maker of all,

Only He is worthy!

With the angels we must fall to our knees.

Even the rocks cry out His name,

All creation sings His praise!

words & music by Dick and Melodie Tunney -- © 1993

SOLD

Around the Bend  © Karen Mathison Schmidt, artist

10 x 8 inches • oil on GessobordTM

private collection • Shreveport, Louisiana

Here’s another of my paintings using the alla prima method. This is winding country road which runs alongside a bayou just up the road from us. Even though we’re not quite there yet, season-wise, I’ve chosen to paint the trees in all their springtime splendor. 

One thing I’m discovering about painting this way (wet-in-wet) is that in order to keep the colors from getting muddy I have to apply the paint thicker and do only one or two strokes at a time before wiping my brush. At first this slowed me down a bit, but once I got a rhythm going this one moved right along, and I LOVE the buttery feel of the thick paint going on!