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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Pastel Mini Demo BIRD NEST and What Inspired it!

'Gathering Eggs'      6x6         pastel        ©Karen Margulis
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Inspiration can come from the most unexpected places. We are painting bird nests in class this week and after my third nest demo I was wondering how I would paint yet another one for the evening class. I was out of ideas. I went upstairs to make lunch and realized I had my painting apron still on. Looking at it got my attention. Wow! my apron has the best color palette for a nest. It even has little turquoise birds on it. So I quickly ate lunch and ran back downstairs to paint a little nest for me!  

Moral of the story: Always be open to inspiration. It can come at the oddest times and from the strangest places. Enjoy today's mini demo and be sure to come back tomorrow to see why we are painting nests.


I start with a quick drawing on dark brown Canson paper, smooth side      size  6x6


I block in the dark masses. Building the nest from big simple shapes before any details.


Putting in the eggs. They will be refined later in the painting.


Continuing to build the nest with darkest colors to lightest. Mixing thick and thin lines.


Putting in the background color...spring greens. Adding some violets in the nest.


Continuing to weave the nest with thin and thick strokes and mixing browns and violets.


Putting in the finishing touches...brighter straw and touches of turquoise. Refining the eggs.


The finished painting along side my very inspiring painting apron!


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed your demo and I painted my own nest with three eggs from a combination of two student paintings shown. My question is this: I'm a very new artist and I don't have many photos/paintings of my own since my house burned down a year ago. My instructor told me my painting is good enough to enter into a competition, so my question is this: With your permission, is this something I can do even though I used a couple of images from your demo?

Karen said...

First, thank you for following my blog and thank you for asking. Usually work done with the help of an instructor or from someone else's photo is not allowed in a competition. I would think that by you interpreting a demo and making it completely your own would be acceptable. I don't mind and I wish you much luck!