Some are a Struggle

I know I have said this before....but it just continues to be reinforced in my studio. Some paintings just paint themselves.....others are a struggle. The current piece falls into the second category. I am continuing my series on vegetables with a piece on asparagus. I was intrigued by the stack of bundled asparagus on my trip to Safeway for reference photos. I decided I wanted to reference the long thin shape of asparagus spears with a tall thin painting. I decided on 9" wide by 24" tall. This was a painting that I basically started at the top and worked my way down......which I don't usually do.....maybe this is something to consider in the future. All went well until I got to the bottom third. Although the top two thirds of the painting were very tedious and time consuming I was happy with the results. Then the bottom third......things just didn't go well. I knew there were problems and decided to take a break from the piece. As I returned to the piece I decided to take a photo and look at it on Photoshop. This really helped as I instantly saw some of the problems. The heads of the asparagus in the lower third were too large....almost twice the size of the top spears. They also did not stand out as individual spears but seem to run more together (maybe from being overworked????). I also suddenly noticed that the bands holding the bundles together at the bottom formed a line across the width and that the two bands on the right side were the exact same width. Not good! I even thought about cropping the piece to eliminate the bottom third. Here is the piece and a cropped version I considered:

The crop eliminated the problems.....but did not have the same impact that the full 24" would have if corrected. So outside with a stiff brush to brush out the problems. Tomorrow we try again. Here is the piece on my easel with the areas brushed out. The lighting is not great....but you can see the work to be done. Wish me luck!

Cave Creek Film and Art Festival - Take 3!!

For the third year in a row I have had a piece juried into the Cave Creek Film and Art Festival. This year I wasn't sure of possible success because I entered my piece, "Equine Eye". This is a piece I was driven to paint....but realized that the subject would not necessarily appeal to everyone. However, I also thought the eye of an equine was appropriate for the very old time western town of Cave Creek....so I sent it in! Today I received the call notifying me that the piece was successful in being juried in. Obviously there are others that share my love for horses!!!

Time to Celebrate!

I received an e-mail today notifying me that my piece, "Market Colors" which was juried into the Pastel Society of the West Coast's Pastels USA 24th International Open Exhibition in Los Gatos, CA was awarded the Pastel Society of New Mexico Award! I was thrilled just to be juried into this prestigious show so winning an award is truly icing on the cake!! Thanks goes to the Pastel Society of New Mexico for sponsoring this award!

New Website Design

I have spent the last few days working to redesign my website. My main purpose for the redesign was to reflect my decision to put my focus on still life paintings. I wanted the website to clearly communicate that focus. As such, I did not include my landscape, figurative or animal subsections for my gallery page. I also wanted my paintings to pop more than they did on the neutral background I used in my first website.....thus the black. The part that I am unsure of is the left column with my business name and the links to the other pages in the website. I am not sure it doesn't intrude on the main focus of each page. I would be excited to get some feedback from you......let me know what you think......how could it be modified to improve it further? Here is the link:
http://www.karenbudanfineart.com/