Cecilia Beaux in Charcoal

I've been tinkering around with this for about a month and I guess I've reached a point where I'm not interested in taking it any further. So, my homage to Cecilia Beaux who painted some stunning, stunning artwork. Two of my favorites of hers are Sita and Sarita 1893 and Mother and Daughter 1898. Somewhat tragically it appears she more or less stopped painting after she fell in Paris and broke her hip in the 1920s. But I just loved that she able to achieve such success during her lifetime - with respect from her peers and from many countries.

C&C's welcome (but I don't think I'm going to revisit her once I spray her with fixative.) 9x12 Charcoal, pencil, & Wolff carbon on Canson paper

God's peace,
Karen

The Letter (wip?)

Like quite a few of you, I've just finished (maybe finished?) painting from what I consider is a masterwork. The artist was Mary Brewster Hazelton http://www.askart.com/askart/h/mary_brewster_hazelton/mary_brewster_hazelton.aspx and her painting of The Letter is one of my favorites. 

 I started with a grid for this one and, it seems to me, I was on a better track with the face at the start than the finish. I must have wiped her face off at least a dozen times. Mine looks more like her slightly younger cousin. In my defense (a lame defense,) I was painting on a 11x14 canvas and the original is on a 38x32. I was using a magnifying glass at the end to capture her face but her face is only about an inch and half so..... I'll stick to that as an excuse. I am quite happy with how I captured Mary's color pallet (I was using an article from The American Art Review as a reference) but the dress in the Askart pic seems to be greener. And yes, I certainly see my other mistakes; I should have moved the figure over at the start so the table wasn't too wide, the shawl color ( I admit I liked it too much to change it) and her hands are too far apart. And then there's her face... It's a sweet face, doncha think? I could attempt just the face on another canvas, right?

But other than that....I had a blast painting her! And isn't that what it's all about? Ah, the learning....ever learning curve.

Cheers all! And God's peace.

ks

Tea in the Sahara

Hi and Hellooo out there,
I had saved this inspiration from a calendar eons ago and finally got around to it on a "repurposed canvas board." I had wanted to limit my pallet to five paint colors but I ended up with seven after deciding the purpley sand dunes needed more...purple. Purple is my friend. (I always have to tell myself that cause I forget about purple and how good it is.) The smaller version of it is all I could capture with the scanner and second full size one was taken outside in the shade. The colors are much more like the scanned one.
Enjoyed painting this. Oil on canvas board 11x14. So my little friend and I will now trip off through the sand dunes, listening to Sting sing about drinking tea in the Sahara.
Cheers. (My hero of the day is Angelina Jolie, but there are so many unsung heros in this world of ours.)
ks

A little bit of randomness

Hi all.  Last week or so was hot, wind, fire, followed by rain and cool. It is a little disturbing, especially to have fire storms in May. Usually we have a bout of that in October. Been working on some paintings but I'm still tinkering with them so just some drawings to share. The first three are on Mi-teintes pastel paper, charcoal, pencil and white charcoal. I like the feel of Mi-teintes. Just enough "crispness". 

 And this last one is on that darn Bee paper. It is too soft! No bite to it at all! I know I've complained about it before but it makes it hard to get clean edges. (So why do I continue to use it?) I think I'll call it a day on drawing them and carry their story onto some sort of painting surface. That way I can separate them even more and increase the drama Dean Cornwell-like, smoke and battlefield behind him and whatnot, letters in their hands, get rid of her pointed chin. Ha!

This months issue of Drawing Magazine has set my mind spinning and now all I want to do is draw. But when do I ever not just want to draw?

Cheers all! God's peace!

ks

Yello-Shea in

Sometimes when you've got lemons... or yellow...
I spooshed out a lot of yellow paint a week or so back. As I'm staring at this pile o'paint, I'm thinking "Okay, what to do with this?" Paint the usual suspects?  And then I remembered when my oldest had been playing nonstop with the pictures on the computer that she had taken of herself, her sister and various friends - Shea included.  Can you say "Saturation?"
And so, we have Shea. I just love Shea. She has a great laugh. I've known her since she was about five. She is all beautifully grown up now and, no, she is not normally yellow and, yes, they are all still close friends. I hope she'll be OK with this. It was a tough angle. A tad too much that way and she looked like the wicked witch of the west. I think it was good practice to paint it "outside of the box" so to speak, but the better test would be to paint from an un-doctored photo and try to judge the values.

I had to check.

Ok, it was fun. I'm gonna to post this on dailypaintworks "Friend" challenge since it was done within the allotted time even though Shea is actually my daughter's friend. I haven't turned any of my friends yellow. At least, not on purpose. 

Cheers all. Hope you're well and good.

ks

Oil on canvas 8x10

Lemon up

I had to force myself to s l o w d o w n on this one.
      I wasn't happy with it at first and now I like it better.
so
     yeah.
For sale on dailypaintworks.com
 http://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/karen-stitt/lemon-up/170032
Oil on canvas 8x10
Cheers all. Hope you are thawing out.
ks

Credit for a wonderful photo by a fellow who goes by samygpunkt on deviantart
http://fav.me/d4gwj6x

Strawberry Ice

I will not rant.

I will not rant

I will not rant

I had to go back and reread the recent post on muddycolorsblogspot about 10 Things...Word List that Greg Manchess (brilliant artist!) wrote about "rehearsing" to be an artist. He is so right. It doesn't just happen, right?  

 http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/2013/04/10-thingsword-list.html

UPDATE: THIS IS FOR SALE ON DAILYPAINTWORKS.COM AND I WILL BE THE ONE MAKING THE DONATION (because I feel strongly about this :)

And I would love to send this off to someone who is willing to make a donation to Children's Hospital or the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. I know a family whose second oldest child was down to 20% lung capacity. 20%! Things were looking very grim for him and lots of prayers were being said. He was in the hospital nonstop for close to a year. Then word came through that donor lungs had been found. Donor lungs. A double lung transplant. 

That hit me when Mrs. Farrell, who taught his younger brothers and sister for sixth grade, discussed it with her current class and one of the kids made the connection...out loud... that that meant someone else had lost a loved one. So to see him...at church...on Palm Sunday...was...incredible. He looks great and his mom looks like she's aged a million years. I may get incredible discouraged by mine sometimes like I'm sure most mothers do at one point or another, but they're healthy (knock wood.) 

So if any of you would like to have this in exchange for a tax deductible donation, please contact me to discuss.

Now back to work....and make time for it! 5x7 Oil on canvas panel 

Happy Spring all!  Karen :)

http://www.cff.org/GetInvolved/ManyWaysToGive/MakeADonation/ (for information)http://www.dailypaintworks.com/buy/auction/164295

Tomato with new paint

Hi and hello,
Ah, Spring. Trees bursting, the roses bushes already have a bloom or two. Planted the garden and now to wait in anticipation for the first tomato of the season. Yum.
A few weeks ago Graphaids had their annual 40% sale and I had to get over to pick up what never really goes on sale, namely oil paint. Yeah, it goes on sale, but I mean on sale. The good stuff. So I arrived after the huge crowds had descended and left, leaving the place quite picked over and a fellow painter and I start to talk. Next thing I know I'm buying Williamsburg Turkey Umber and Italian Yellow Ochre. I had no intention of buying these colors when I went in, but he proclaimed their virtues and I succumbed. Like shopping when you're hungry. Ok, he was right. They are most interesting. And then also I bought what I intended, Cerulean Blue and Alizarin Crimson. For these last two I opted for Sennelier.  So, like any time you buy something new (earrings, shoes) you have to try them on for size, right? What if they're just not you? So I grabbed some of the paper canvas I had already prepped, taped off the edges, got my pallet in place, squeezed out a dollop of Turkey Umber (OK, nice), squeezed out a dollop of Italian Yellow Ochre (OK, nice), opened the tube of Sennelier Cerulean Blue and SPLOOSH! About two tablespoons of just oil - no pigment - all over the Umber and Ochre. Wow. I promptly went online to wetcanvas.com and got the answer in a snap. Sennelier is made with safflower oil and separates. The word on the street is, "Store them upside down. Should be OK for the long run." Who knew? They did. Now I do and you do too.

On paper canvas (thank you Azra!)  about 7x9
Cheers all! Gods blessings!
Karen

Vernal equinox

This is from Monday night's drawing class, 

my five minutes.

Two twenty minutes (didn't quite come together)

Now a break from class for three weeks. We are going onto perspective.

Vernal equinox (or) enjoy the first day of Spring! 

Cheer all! Karen

Every Picture Tells a Story

Well I think the cosmic block has moved on for me. If it affected you, I hope its moved on as well or at least that it doesn't hover over your neighborhood. I am full of random thoughts today, trying to reorient myself (I dislike time change to put it mildly.) 

Started this little one here by just putting down charcoal strokes and then cutting in with my kneaded eraser.

 Re-darkened some areas, a bit of white charcoal and felt reinvigorated. Huzzah!

Then on Monday night's drawing class we had a stunning fellow to draw. 

Here are my five minutes,

 then my first two twenty minutes. 

 He had piercing ice blue eyes - I mean just crystal ice blue! He would go into his pose and mold his face into this fierce look and if I had been on a bus with him and he stared in my direction with that look, I would have gotten up and moved. Then he'd relax and smile and light up the room. Chris said to mix it up a bit and break out of my comfort zone, so I did a bit along the same as my dapper man at top.

Ok, fun to share. Back to work and then hopefully some painting tonight.

One more thing that gave me a real chuckle. My brother H (his wife calls him that and it so fits him) texted me, saying he had a dream I was married to Brad Pitt and Brad was mean to him. HA! I read it to my husband whose response was "Well, tell him he'll appreciate me a bit more. I'm not mean to him like Brad." The more I thought about it, the more I realized it would depend on which Brad Pitt, the Brad from Meet Joe Black? Well, alrighty then! The Brad from Kalifornia? No thank you!

And have you seen this? Its hysterical!

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/celebrities-normal-people-gallery-1.1113180?pmSlide=3

Alright, enough of my randomness for one day. Cheers All!

Karen