‘Beauty Among Us’     5×7       pastel      ©Karen Margulis

I love reading older art magazines. They are filled with tips and inspiration.  I buy them in lots on ebay and browse through them when I have some downtime. I came across an article in a 2011 issue of American Artist about artist Kathy Anderson and I want to share a nugget of wisdom from the article.

Kathy’s flower painting are just wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about her approach and background. One thing really stood out to me though.  She studies with Richard Schmidt and Nancy Guzik and one of the things Nancy told her  is to “Make every Inch Beautiful” in your painting.
I love this advice!

‘Where the Meadow Fairies Play’           16×20       pastel         ©Karen Margulis

Painting a series is a great learning experience. It is a challenge to discover how to take the same subject and create a new and interesting interpretation.  I have a series going that has come about by accident, I am learning so much from these paintings though so I am going to continue with the series. Let me explain…

If today’s painting looks familiar somehow that is because I have painted a similar meadow with Queen Anne’s Lace many times. I didn’t even realize just how many times until I was going through some unfinished work.  I came across several of the same size and composition…all unfinished. They are demos that I started for my Wildflower workshops and demos done for various art groups.

I find that I choose this particular scene to paint because it helps me illustrate so many of the things I want to share with the group. It allows be do discuss underpaintings. layering. atmospheric perspective, designing a painting and arrangement of flowers, choosing a focal area, finishing marks,  It is just a great subject for a demo. But I don’t need 10 of the same painting so I am finishing each one and changing them in some way.

I decided to make this demo painting into a soft early morning  landscape. I added some pearlescent pastel which to me gave the painting a magical glow. I felt like it would be the perfect place for the meadow Fairies!

If you would like to see the other paintings in the series visit my daily painting blog here

‘The Forever Flowers’           9×12          pastel          ©Karen Margulis

Two weeks ago Jayne and I went to visit our friend Holly at her mountain house. She has a huge garden with half of it devoted to flowers. Her neighbor plants and tend the flowers. There are dahlias of all shapes and colors, zinnias, cosmos and sunflowers. I was in heaven! We went down to the garden several times a day to take photos in the changing light. We enjoyed the bees and hummingbirds and butterflies.

We love the flowers but don’t like them to be cut. (deadheading is OK) Early the next morning the neighbor came and started cutting and making the bouquets that she sells at the market. Oh it was so sad to see those sunflowers cut down. And imagine our dismay when she brought a cut bouquet up to the house for us to enjoy. She meant well. She didn’t quite get why we prefer our flowers growing and not cut. I told my friends that I would take pictures of the bouquet and paint them so that we would enjoy them forever.

I painted them on Diane Townsend pastel paper with a watercolor underpainting. I painted them from my heart. Jayne and Holly….here’s to our Forever Flowers!