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Saturday, November 28, 2020

Taking Out my Artistic License!


        'Follow the Creek'                   12x18              pastel             ©Karen Margulis        $295

Last week I did a livestream demo for a pastel group. The theme of the presentation was 'Using your Artistic License'. I shared my favorite tips for interpreting a crummy reference photo. I painted from a small portrait format marsh photo and decided to make it a larger landscape format painting. It was a fun demo but I only had an hour so when the stream ended I worked on the painting a bit more and really utilized my artistic license!

Below is the painting at the end of the demo. It is 12x18 on Uart 400 with a bold purple underpainting.


Now scroll up to the painting at the top of this post. This is the finished version. Can you see the changes I made?  My goal was to draw the viewer into the painting and enjoy visiting the marsh. I also wanted a visual connection between the ground and the sky. My first try was to add some yellow in the sky to relate to the yellow flowers. I wasn't quite happy with the results. I then decided to add some subtle pink flowers and pull some of that pink into the sky. I then added back the yellow flowers. 

I used my Floral Landscape set of Terry Ludwig pastels along with some assorted Nupastel. 


 

Come on over to my Patreon group to see the video replay! www.patreon.com/karenmargulis. It is a $4 monthly pledge but you can cancel at anytime!

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