One Important Task Before Painting

'Transitions'         9x12        pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $125

A painting should begin with a plan. I have a few steps involved in my planning stage. I admit I sometimes skim over some of them but lately I have added a step that I won't skip. It is all about the color!

Color can be chaotic without thought and planning. 

Some artists are fortunate and  have a finely tuned sense of color.  They instinctively know just which colors to pick up. They make interesting and harmonious color choices seemingly without effort and without preplanning.  I admire that ability but I don't like to leave color to chance. I don't want to get halfway through a painting and become lost in the pile of pastels that is growing on my easel tray. I don't want to deal with color chaos.

Now I don't have to take my chances with color anymore. I make time to make a

 COLOR NOTE STUDY.

a 2.5 x 3.5 inch color note study.

• Color Note Studies are small scraps of paper (preferably the same paper/color of the painting) They are not detailed mini paintings.

• Color Note Studies are simply marks on the paper that represent the various elements in the painting.  They can be a very loose abstracted series of marks.

• Color Note Studies allow the artists to see how the colors selected for a painting will look together and their approximate relationships. 

• The studies save the artist much frustration and saves pastel. We can visualize how a color palette will look before experimenting on a bigger piece of paper. Experiment on a tiny piece!

Today's painting was a demo for a private class. I was painting from a photo of a summer meadow filled with pink flowers. My concept was to turn the meadow into a fall scene with yellow flowers. The color study notes helped me see if my color choices would work for my concept.

Try This: Make a commitment to do a color note study for your next painting. Decide in advance what your palette will be and test out your choices on a scrap of paper.

What is this Patreon Page you are talking about? 

I have had some questions and concerns about the new platform I am using to share additional instructional resources. My Patreon Page is EXTRA STUFF! I will still post to this blog and make free videos for youtube but I will offer expanded posts with themes and challenges and demos in Patreon. The page is $4 a month. This blog and my Youtube channel are free and will continue to operate as usual!

THANK YOU to all of you who are now supporting me on Patreon. I am excited to be able to share even more with you. Check it out if you haven't seen it yet: www.patreon.com/karenmargulis

And here is a comment from an artist who uses Patreon:

To your subscribers, I follow a few creators in Patreon and this is an excellent way to learn more of their techniques and really get to know how they think when they are painting. It is an excellent value for the immense amount of information you receive. There is no long-term commitment. You pledge $4 a month and get email notification when something is posted on Patreon. You can unsubscribe to a creator whenever you want before the first of the month and not be charged that next month. Your rate never changes unless you change it. Karen may decide to add Patreon features such as one on one critiques at a higher rate and you can sign up if you want or not. One of my creators allows 10 patrons a month this feature as you can imagine it's very intensive and time consuming for them. But again, you may elect to do it one or two months and then stop so another student can have the opportunity. All in all, Patreon is a great feature for students and gives the creator the necessary funds to be able to test out new products and demonstrate for us, show expanded detailed videos of their techniques and give us a sneak peak into their art world! Win-win!!