Painting Archives - Studio Katie

Maple Valley Art Walk

Hey friends! So this post is just a bit of an update about something exciting with the more fine art related portion of my work.

Back in September last year I submitted my art to an art walk and got in! This was my first ever “art show”, so it was really neat. The Maple Valley Art Walk happens every 2 months, so my art was at the Vintage Vino in November, and here at The Nutty Squirrel for the next 2 months.

This month though was extra exciting because I submitted a few more pieces and have the whole of The Nutty Squirrel Gelato featuring just my oil paintings!

As an emerging artist, I’m pretty proud of this! I’m excited to see how my art will continue to grow in 2019. I’ve really enjoyed working more with oil paints lately!

You can see all of my paintings in my gallery here.

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How to Swatch your Watercolor Pan Set

Hey everyone, I recently made a swatch of some of my watercolors and wanted to show you the process, in case you’re curious about doing it for your own pan sets.

Today’s post is also a bit of a product review, because I just bought this watercolor tin palette, and since I’ve gotten some questions about it on instagram, I’m doing a review!

Let’s start with the swatching:

Step 1: Start by cutting down a piece of watercolor paper to fit into the lid of your palette.

Step 2: use a ruler to sketch a grid out onto the paper that matches the paints inside your palette. This tin holds 40 half pans, so that’s the grid I made.

Step 3. Fill up your pans. Obviously you’d skip this set if your palette is already filled. I, however, am using this tin to hold all of the tube watercolors I own. I actually left a few empty in case I bought new colors.

Step 4. As you fill up the half pans, write out the name of each color into the spaces on your swatch paper.

Step 5: Use a clean paintbrush to swatch each color into the matching spaces on the paper. It’s helpful to have a couple of jars of water nearby, so that you can continuously clean your paintbrush so that the swatches are true to color, and not contaminated with the previous color.

Now you can keep this inside your palette, and refer back to it when you’re painting so that you know exactly what each color will look like on paper.

Okay, let’s review this palette:

What is it?

Fclub Watercolor Tins Palette Paint Case with 40Pcs Half Pans Carrying Magnetic Stripe on The Bottom

Why I bought it: I wanted some empty paint pans so that I could squeeze my tube watercolors into a palette.

I was just going to buy some empty half pans on amazon, but when I saw this tin had Van Gogh’s Starry Night printed on it, AND it was only a couple of dollars more than just empty pans by themselves, I wanted to try this.

What’s cool about it: Well, besides the Starry Night (Nan Gogh fangirl here)? Each half pan has a magnet on the bottom, so that they stick to the tin and don’t fall out.

Any cons? well, when I first opened it, half of the pans had come away from the magnets. The magnets turned out to be some cheap self adhesive magnetic strips on the bottom of each one, that aren’t actually that “sticky” so the adhesive didn’t hold to the half pans. Easily fixed by me reglueing them to the pans with a stronger glue, but I was bummed that I had to do that at all.

I did actually remove a few of the half pans on the bottom row, simply because I had some extra full pans with watercolors that a friend gave me and I wanted to include in the tin as well.

Overall, I’d totally recommend it, if you want a new palette tin, and if don’t mind possibly repairing the magnets, and you love Van Gogh. Although it is available in different patterns on the outside as well.

You can grab one on amazon here. Note that this isn’t a paid post, and not an affiliate link. I just really like this new palette and wanted to let you guys know about it! 😉

What other art product reviews would you like to see here?

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Watercolor Double Exposure Nature Art with Tombow Dual Brush…

This post contains affiliate links. which help pay for this site. That being said, I never promote anything I don’t love! If you purchase using them, I might get a small commission at no additional cost to you.

Hey guys, today I have another fun project to share with you that I created for Tombow USA! What is it? Double Exposure Art! I really love creating paintings inspired by double exposure photography so I thought I’d show you an easy way to do that too!

A double exposure is the superimposition of two or more photo exposures to create a single image.

Supplies:

Watercolor Paper
Pencil (I like these MONO Drawing Pencils)
Dual Brush Pens
Blending Palette
Paint Brush + Water
White Gel Pen (this is optional, but I use the Uniball Signo)
1500 Colored Pencils (also optional)

Step one: Start off by drawing an outline of an image with a pencil. As I said, I’m using a MONO Drawing Pencil. I love these pencils for drawing, especially the pencils in the B range, as they’re nice and soft. Because we’ll be painting our image, I recommend using a heavy watercolor paper.

Step two: In the video below, I’m using Dual Brush Pens to paint a forest scene inside my girl outline.

Start by applying the Dual Brush Pen ink to the blending palette, then you can pick the ink up with a wet paint brush and they act just like watercolors! You’ll want to have a few different shades of your color, and starting with the lightest, paint trees at the top of your image. Switch to darker and darker shades as you work your way down.

Hey everyone, it’s @studio.katie here again, showing you how to create a painting inspired by nature and double exposure photographs! . In the video, I’m using @tombowusa Dual Brush Pens to paint a forest scene inside my girl outline. By applying the Dual Brush Pen ink to the Blending Palette, you can pick them up with a wet paintbrush and they act just like watercolors! You’ll want to have a few different shades of your color, and starting with the lightest, paint trees at the top of your image. Switch to darker and darker shades as you work your way down. . Stay tuned to see the finished painting! #tombow #tombowusa #tombow2018dt ? #illustration #illustrationoftheday #illustrationartist #illustrationdaily #drawing #drawings #draw #drawingaday #sketch #sketchbook #artwork #artist #art #artstagram #arttutorial #artoftheday #artistsoninstagram #artnerd #tombowart #natureart

A post shared by Tombow USA (@tombowusa) on Apr 18, 2018 at 11:31am PDT

And you’ve made a double exposure painting! YAY! To finish mine off, I used a few of Tombow’s 1500 colored pencils to darken the edges of the girl and fill in any gaps. These colored pencils layer so nicely over top of the Dual Brush Pens! I also used the white gel pen just to add in a few highlights. I was thinking they could be fireflies in my forest girl.

Leave me a comment telling me what you would paint inside of a double exposure piece!

Painting

My Experiments with Oil Painting

Hey guys, so today I wanted to talk about my experience with oil paints!

In the past I’ve always thought oil paints looked really neat, but I was always to scared to try them out even though I wanted to try them. I didn’t know much about them, other than they’re what fancy artists used, and they took a lot of work to clean up (at least in my mind) so they were very intimidating.

But then I got a set for Christmas, so I decided to give them a go. If I mess up, no big deal, right?

So in the past 4 months I’ve been using them. I checked out a bunch of books on oils from the library, and have watched a few youtube videos (and I have always loved watching Bob Ross, so there’s that.), so those have been my teachers.

I started with a few experiments on canvas paper, to get the “feel” of oils. And boy do they feel so much different than acrylics and watercolors. They don’t dry immediately, so you actually have time to blend them, and they’re so buttery and smooth.

My first real painting with them, even though it was still on canvas paper, was this galaxy. Which I am thrilled to say sold. It was hard to believe my first ever oil painting sold right away. (Thank you SO much Julia!)

Since then, I’ve just been continuing to experiment and practice. I know the only way I’ll get better and learn is to practice, so that’s what my goal for the year is.

I’ve been slowly falling in love with oils. They’re so different than watercolors, which have been my favorite medium for quite a while. So it’s hard to choose between them.

My favorite finished oil painting so far, has probably been Forest Sanctuary (seen below). I love how she turned out.

Okay, so have you used oil paints before? Any tips or tricks you’d care to share with me and anyone else who reads this?

Thanks for reading! xo, -Katie

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#The100DayProject Update: 1-10

Now that we’re 10 days into the 100 Day Project, (I talked about my goals for this project here.), I wanted to do an update showing you the first 10 postcard paintings I have completed.

I’m not doing any specific themes for my paintings, just doing whatever I feel like on each day. That said, there will obviously be a lot of galaxies and girl portraits throughout the project.

The 3 girls I did this week:

My favorite from the week: Bob Ross.

He’s my hero.

And my two watercolor galaxy paintings from the week:

10 days down, 90 more to go! That’s not daunting.. Not at all……….

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My #The100DayProject

I’m writing this post to announce that I’m joining in on the 100 day project. If you haven’t heard of it, #The100DayProject is a movement started by @elleluna, you can learn more about the project here. It’s pretty simple though, you decide on a theme and just create for 100 days, starting today, April 3rd. (Although you can certainly start whenever you want!)

Okay, so I debated whether or not I even wanted to join in on this challenge. As a full time artist, I create everyday anyhow and I’m going to be out of town twice during the 100 days for a total of three weeks traveling, so I really wasn’t sure. But I love daily challenges, so I am joining in.

Another struggle I had was deciding what I wanted my 100 day project to be. I was *this* close to doing 100 days of lists. Like, it was my plan up until today, day 1, and I’ve changed my mind. Ha. So, my project is:

100 days of postcard paintings.

I’m going to make 1 4×6 postcard sized painting every day. It can be any medium and theme, I just want to experiment. I’ll be sharing them on instagram via the hashtag #katiepaintspostcards

Why am I choosing that over lists? I l-o-v-e listing. It’s my favorite way to journal. But I wanted to use the 100 day project to grow as an artist, and I just didn’t see the lists as a way to do that. With the paintings I can experiment with new techniques and practice my painting skills.

That being said, I will probably still do more lists. I love the 30 days of lists challenge and I don’t want to wait until the next round to start listing again. So I’ll be doing lists too. Just not as a daily challenge.

Are you doing the 100 day project? Tell me about your challenge!