New Video Demo: The Magic of Painting on Black

'A Beautiful Secret'          11x14           pastel          ©Karen Margulis
available $185

There is a story behind this painting. I shared it on my Facebook Live video Sunday afternoon and I will share it again in another blog post because it makes me smile! I had so much fun painting this live on Facebook. It is not a perfect video. We had some technical difficulties. But the information is there and if you'd like to see this painting develop you can see the video on my YouTube channel.

Link to the demo on YouTube:

 https://youtu.be/T15DgjmiTPk

The painting began with a plan. I changed the format of the photo and chose to do a landscape orientation. I did a black and white thumbnail to work out the composition.

My reference photo and my black and white thumbnail

I was interested in capturing the drama of the dark trees behind the flowers so I decided to do a black underpainting. I used an Art Graf carbon disc pigment black washed with water. I love these Art Graf squares!

An underpainting on Uart paper with Art Graf Carbon Disc wash

I got as far as the photo below in the video demo. I stopped at this point because the painting needed some thinking time before I could add the final touches.  It is very hard to explain how I make these final marks. I find I get lost in this part of a wildflower painting and I simply have to let go and let my hand take over. It is a lot of adding detail and taking some away....a lot of back and forth!

In an upcoming live demo I will JUST do a finish to a painting so that you can see that part of the painting process.  I hope you enjoy the demo!

The demo as I finished the live demo.More work needed.

The aftermath!

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