Eclectic Studio - Tammy Morrison-Koenig

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...

We have all heard the old adage - One mans junk is another man's treasure. Well being a student of the arts and an avid yard saler I am always on the lookout for frames/canvases/inspirational books.. you know. Well these are 2 examples of what people get rid of without knowing what kind of value they have. The first one was in a box of about 20 frames i had purchases for $2. We got talking about what I did and they gave it to me for an incredible deal. When i got the box home I started going through it and came across this personal letter from Ronald Reagan - on White House letter head thanking this gentleman for the jelly beans. I think it quite COOL. The next one is a Circa 1918 original photograph of Charlie Chaplin's movie "A Dog's Life". This one was free because I do what I do. I hope this inspires you to look -inside the box- LOL and see what treasures are out there to be found.