Eclectic Studio - Tammy Morrison-Koenig

Hi everyone, Its been a bit since I posted last. Been kinda down dealing with all the snow we have been getting. From 25 to -2 and blizzard conditions in 24 hours. EEk. But my garden survived and is thriving.. now i just want the sun to peek out again. Anyways, here is a small painting I did for the WDE over at wetcanvas. I was drawn to this photo for the twisting winding shapes and the textures on the yellow bulbous masses. Now to try and capture that. After I drew out the general shapes and masked out the yellow bulbs I started an under painting with some gambouge for the sunshine and turquoise for the shadows with a little rose madder thrown in for good measure. ;) Next I came back with glazes of sap green for overall continuity. And some more glazes of turquoise and gamouge.. making sure the layers are dry. After the masking was remove I came back in and stippled in some lemon yellow, gambouge, lt red and orange. ** special note, take care not to cover the entire white space

Hi everyone. Well summer is quickly moving in in this neck of the woods so I have been busy digging my garden beds and planting some vedgies. I already have onions, radishes, spinach, carrots and beets coming up. :) As well I have been busy with getting 3 back to back commission pieces - in pencil. Kinda funny since I usually work in watercolors. hmmm. Thinking maybe I should rethink my focus. LOL Anyways this is my latest. It is a picture of "Lad" a border collie with a wonderful story behind him. In the reference picture one of Lad's eyes was closed - so I opened it up and added a stick in the foreground - I guess he is a fetcher. :) Working with black fur is not easy. Even though it looks black there are 3-4 values within those darks. Good morning. :) So in this installment the fur is starting to "fluff" up and you can start to see the many shadows involved in the underside of the puppy. Also the woodwork is starting to get some texture in it. I am also go

Well it is finally done - thank heavens! And over the next few days I will be posting what I have been working on over the past 2 months. This is a double portrait- kinda - of my second cousin and her favorite pony out in the field. This was NOT the easiest piece I have ever done and it was definatly a challenge going from color to black and white again. On with the show. Stage 1 is the line drawing and the most important of all stages. Careful planning at this stage will guide you through the rest of the process with ease. Remember every line is an opportunity for a value change so plan.. plan.. plan. Hope you can see these first 2 steps Now its all relative.. LOL ;) I tend to bounce around allot when i work because 1. I get bored easy. 2. I tend to see how one area works against another. If you see in this stage I have started placing some of my darkest darks - the lightest lights will be the paper itself. Any other value that i put in will be in between these 2. So far there is

Good morning all. Well spring has definatly arrived here. It has been exceptionally warm and sunny, competing for the hot spot in the country and we are headed to a record breaker today. :) This little painting was done plein aire yesterday. The little sparrow would have been better but they dont hold still long enough to get a good sketch in. LOL Since putting up our feeders we have had blue jays, sparrows, chickadees, and a couple gross beaks show up. And of course when they do get very close I dont have my camera handy. Figures! ;)

Rock Canyon 16*20 acrylic on stretched canvas Yes between packing, moving, and unpacking i did manage to fit in another painting. LOL ;) Been working on my landscapes lately, I thought this one was done then I photograph it and I now see little things that need tweaking. Mainly done with a pallett knife and a little brush work. Hope you enjoy

  This is one of my most helpful tips - create color cards. I have about 100 of these tiny 5*7 reference cards that show different color mixes under different circumstances. Some for people, landscapes, floral etc. This one represents some caucasian skin tone color mixes. There are alot of people out there that use Cadmium red in their mixes but i find that it doesnt lend it self to glazing well and it is a pretty strong color. If I use it it is usually right at the end for detailing.

This is what happens when a painting paints itself. I started this little piece by wetting my paper and just dropping in some color. reserving some lights - as the darks I can always paint in later. Let it dry. Now it is just rotating your picture until you see pattern you like and start "carving" the image out. This painting started out as a 6*6 and ended up beign an art card size. I will probaby use the extra in either a scrap booking page or a collage.

Just doodling and this what I came up with- I thought it was done after the first shot but it needed atmosphere to go along with mood. So i added some bushes in the front, and yet it was still missing something- so i went back in added the fence and deepened the shadows a little. Im thinking the shadow behind him is a little off it should be taller abd skinnier and sitting more off to the right a little - but oh well. One of the joys of watercolor is it is very hard to correct mistakes. These little paintings start out with a few simple Random brush strokes on a comination of wet/dry paper, I let them dry and them find pattern with in what was and work with it. That way your brain has the chance to switch over to the left and paint "what you see.. not what you think you see" Thank you Betty Edwards ;) These are my versions thumbnails.

When i started painting i was overwhelmed with the amount of tube color out there. But I soon came to find the best color mixes are the ones you make yourselves. Greens are a prime example of this. One day I was bored and pulled out every watercolor in my paint box and do a simple color chart. This color chart is very valuable when it comes to seeing the saturation, opacity, staining quality, and any special notes or qualities that the color may have. But out of this rainbow I only use the first 11 colors on a regular basis, adding an exotic color every once in a while just to switch it up a bit. A palette is such a personal choice and not all people will be drawn to using certain colors, I use palette because of its simplicity. A warm and cool of each color and neutral mixer (burnt sienna). I am looking at switching my warm red from napthol (grumbacher) red to more of a transparent. When I was working on March of the clowns I found that this red was NOT a good glazier as it seemed to

Love to hear what you think?

6.5" * 8.25 Watercolor on 140lb $220 USD For Sale Matted and Mounted Im such a techno weenie. I do have a WIP for this painting somewhere around here, I started it last winter i just dont know how to bump and archived post.

HI all, I would like to introduce you to my youngest boy - i couldnt resist trying to capture the toothless grin that he is famous for. This started out ok with the line drawing and the diox purple underpainting - but now it has got to the ugly stage and i am forcing myself to work through it. His skin tones were painted using rose madder and yellow ochre. Way to yellow for him so i am going to add a layer or 2 of perm rose just to try and tone it out a bit. If there are any portrait artists out there I could really use some help trying to correct these issues. The next installment of Xander is here. It is starting to pop, I started this session by masking out his eyes and a few highlights in his hair before i proceeded to start adding a large wash of his skin tones focusing on transitions between the yellows and reds. After a few layers to build up tone, I went back in with a very light wash of cobalt blue and started "carving out" some shadows. Still looking p

Another finger-painting. I have become a very tactile person the older i get and even though you cant get the fine details that a brush could give you I love the feel of squishy paint between my fingers. I know it sounds gross but it almost tricks your brain into thinking of your piece as a sculpture being molded instead of painted. If that makes any sense. ;)

Well this was an eye opener. Another acrylic but this time i tried pouring, as well as my fingers dipped in water to acheive this marbleing technique. Overall it "was a beautiful painting till it started to dry and then it cracked. I dont know why - maybe because the paint was applied so thickly. hmm! Anyways I thought I would share what was. I peeled this painting off and are saving the paint skins for another project.