Evolution of a painting

This is a painting I have been working on. Thinking of teaching my process here. I have taped and documented this piece from sketch to finish. I started by sketching two figures. I knew I wanted to incorporate birds but wasn't sure how they would show up. They weren't in the original sketch. In fact I left out alot from the original sketch as I painted. The sketch is a starting point and usually evolves into something much different. But I think sketching is very important. It helps me become more familiar with my images I am creating.
After the sketch, I started splashing paint and creating marks by using brushes, stencils, my fingers,speedball pens. I either paint or draw marks with the speedball pen.The acrylic washes are quite light and look like transparent watercolors.
I next go in with more opaque paint and white and blocking out the figures. I paint the features and work on details of the faces. I then go back in with more color and wild color placement and finally I calm the painting down till I am done.
It is process that absorbs me for hours and I can't wait to start another.
Thanks for visiting!

Watercolor and acrylic washes portrait painting class is now open

http://thetroddenpath.ning.com/group/watercolor-and-acrylic-washes-portrait-painting

Teaching and creating

I just started my first online class at The Trodden Path. I love teaching and interacting with my students. People have told me over the years that I should consider teaching and I just didn't think it was my path. Jane DesRosier contacted me about teaching on her ning site and I am so thrilled I said yes! I now have so many ideas I want to share and teach. My next class will be on portraits. I discovered a technique that I am really enjoying and it is working with watercolors, gesso, alcohol inks and acrylics. The portrait class will be working with that technique. My current class, Watercolor Fresco Painting, is working on a substrate I call plaster fabric and using photo transfers watercolors and gesso. There is a painting in this post of a woman with a acrylic wash background and layered with acrylics and gesso. I am planning on creating a class where you create acrylic washes and drippings and working on top of that by creating a composition of figures. The figure inspiration can come from post-raphaelite painters as a starting point and building the layers with acrylics, gesso and watercolors. Really excited about this process. I thought teaching would take me away from my own art but what it is doing is crystalizing my style and digging deeper into my process. I love it!

Watercolor Fresco Painting

I am almost ready to launch my first online class "Watercolor Fresco Painting at http://thetroddenpath.ning.com/. Here are some of the examples of what you can make in this class. I have always loved watercolors, but in the past 2 years I started painting in acrylics and loved the layering and texturing you could achieve with them. I still loved how watercolor looked with all the beautiful watermarks and how they blended so well. I discovered, by mistake, where alot of magic happens, that I could work with the layering method by using gesso with the watercolors. And to get even more in the texture I could paint on cracked plaster.
For so many years I worked as a fiber artist and loved creating with fabrics and stitching. I discovered two years ago, that I had a passion for painting, and now it is all coming together with painting on the fabrics. I have a collection of vintage linens that work so well into these pieces. It is fun to hunt for new and different painting substrates by digging through vintage linens! I look forward to this new adventure in my life.....teaching!! Come join me!

Watercolor gesso painting from Kate Thompson on Vimeo.

Mindy Murphy Lacefield Paint Your Story Class

This class has been a game changer for me! I have always been a very careful methodical artist. Everything carefully planned out. I have been painting now for two years and my goal is to get looser with my work; to be more spontaneous. I would start paintings and in midstream I would get bored. All the spontaneity would become deadened and my results were a disappointment. But I had this drive, this obsessive urge to keep going but I just didn't have the "tools" to get me there. It wasn't instinctual for me to work that way so I had no idea where to start. Working through Mindy's class I now have some tools to express the energy I feel when I am painting. It is so exciting. Scribbling with crayons still make me a bit uncomfortable but I understand why. It helps to loosen up and to not make the painting "too precious". Too precious leaves my work sterile. I feel like my paintings are becoming more alive and what is so cool about this process is you start to "see" images as you madly slap paint around. My last piece I completed almost has an encaustic feel about it. I started combining acrylics and watercolors on top....so cool and soft. I have been looking at alot of encaustic work lately and somehow those "images" came through. I look forward to what I do next using these priceless techniques I just learned from Mindy Murphy Lacefield!

Back to the drawing board and then some...

Hi everyone...My passion these days is drawing. I combine graphite and charcoal with a touch of white and offwhite chalk pastel.I am very drawn to clothing and how it hangs on the human figure. It becomes an abstract study rather than just trying to capture a realistic image. I love detail but I find in drawing realistically I lose interest and my mind wanders. I had a cool experience happen while doing this. My mind became so focused on the linework I was doing, I was paying attention to the pressure I was applying, the angle of my arm and the energy I was feeling as I was drawing a single stroke. It became abstract to me and my attention came back to what I was doing. I think that is "being in the moment" and I worked several hours more on the drawing than I had planned. Drawing has come alive for me again. Because alot of my work is very detailed and takes time to create, I wanted to make the most of my images by incorporating them into other pieces. I don't want to just make prints of my work but make new art. I think the next step to my drawings is to print them on tissue printer ( I have already experimented with my other paintings), take that image and imbed it onto a plaster layered substrate. Once I do that I will apply encaustic and possibly some oil paint. The tissue images are so lovely and translucent that I want to retain that. I think the encaustic will be a great addition. Will be posting my progress soon. So back to it.....

Venetian Plaster 2.mov

This is a first of youtube videos. I am planning on a series of videos where I talk about my thinking process and inspiration. Stay tuned and hope you enjoy this!