Spring Brings New Things
“Teatime and Tulips”
Happy Spring! I hope all of you are enjoying this wonderful time of year! It’s been a fun, but busy time for me, as I have some new things to share with you.
The first is about the completion of my latest piece, “Teatime and Tulips, which is pictured above. I wanted to share some of the story from this painting as well as some of the process used to complete this artwork.
It all began with a trip to Pilot Point, Texas about 2 years ago. My husband took me to a tulip farm and it was quite the trip. What an experience to see so many varieties of tulips! The color and variety were so spectacular. I took hundreds of photos. You could cut tulips as you went through and then pay to bring them home. The flowers in the vase in my painting are the ones I chose to bring home. I put them in a vase and placed them on my breakfast table. As I was admiring them during breakfast the next morning, the Idea came to create a still life and call it “Teatime & Tulips”. So, the adventure began of getting the DSLR camera out, setting up my still life with the flower arrangement, a teapot, and a tea cup. Choosing the teacup was difficult, but finally settled on the one having some of the same coloration as one of the tulips. I love teacups and have collected a few and plan to use them in future still life paintings while enjoying their beauty in my home. Back to the photo shoot—I took about 90 photos, making different arrangements as I went, then uploaded to my computer, edited some of my favorites and then finally choosing the ones I loved from the sequence. Then my photos remained on my computer until this spring when the flowers started emerging. I remembered I had taken those still life shots and became inspired to create a painting from one of them. So, I pulled them up again and chose which one I would like to paint, printed it out for a reference, and then began preparing for how to create this piece. I was so excited about creating this painting. It was bright and cheerful after coming out of some really cold weather and gloomy days. My spirit was uplifted as I planned this. Springtime is such a glorious season with all of the newness coming to life around us! My hope for this painting, wherever it finds its forever home, is it will lift others’ spirits as it did mine. If you would like for Teatime & Tulips to hang in your home, you can purchase from my website: https://www.kimkeysart.com.
Now to the process of how to approach creating the painting. I first had to decide the surface I wanted to paint on and decided on choosing a sanded paper called LuxArchival by Brush and Pencil Products. A colored pencil artist, Alyona Nickelson, invented and designed this paper just for colored pencil. I have used it a few times and really liked it, so I decided to use it for this project. It was a perfect choice! I love how brilliantly the colors popped on this paper. I had decided to make a vignette style background to bring the focus to this beautiful still life. To get the background in I used oil based colored pencils (Faber Castel Polychromos and Derwent Lightfast) along with the powdered blender by Brush and Pencil. This speeded up the process in colored pencil quite a bit but also created a beautiful and softly blended effect. (I plan to create a tutorial showing my technique for this technique soon.) I then began to undercoat the rest of the piece with the same brands of oil based pencils and blended with the powder blender. The next layers were put on with wax based pencils, mostly with Caran D’ache Luminance pencils. As I began to add the layers with the Luminance, it began to come to life! There were other steps, but for the most part, this is how I completed the project. It truly was a fun experience for me as the artist!
In the last few weeks I have been going live on my Facebook page (Kim Keys Fine Art) to teach from my free ebook, Getting Started in Colored Pencil. This ebook contains colored pencil tips to get you started in colored pencil, a supply list, and a full tutorial to complete a beautiful apple. The videos of previous sessions are still on my page, if you desire to catch up with where we are currently in the project. Since you receive my newsletter already, you can email me at kimkeysart@gmail.com to request it and I will forward the ebook to you as a thank you for signing up for my newsletter. This ebook became available after some of you signed up for my newsletter, so I wanted to make that offer to you if you desire the free ebook.
The last new thing is I have created a YouTube Channel called Kim Keys Art! I’m so excited in beginning this adventure and sharing it with you. Since you are a subscriber to my newsletter, you are going to be the first to be able to see my first video I have uploaded to the new channel! This video is made from the progress scans I made as I worked on my latest work, “Teatime and Tulips”. Please subscribe to my YouTube Channel while you are there viewing so you will be able to see new videos as I upload them in the near future. I hope you enjoy this first video, and here is the link: https://youtu.be/O5EgiyF79EQ .
That about covers my news for this month! I would love for you to join me on Facebook live (Facebook@Kim Keys Fine Art) on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:00 a.m. (CST). If you desire to purchase original artwork or prints, please visit https://www.kimkeysart.com.
