I loved this warm-up exercise and ended up doing 3.

I’m in Fairbanks Alaska and am so excited to art art art! I’ve done a bunch of these warmups and am finding I like solid big shapes basing a composition - which I honestly didn’t know until going through and BW and posterizing all the images I thought were fun.

I'm in Seattle at the moment, but am relocating to Roanoke, Virginia at the end of the month (cross-country road trip with cats and all).. With that, I won't be able to engage as fully as I'd like, but I'll be here as much as life allows. Warm up(s) coming soon!

Looking forward to being much more intentional in my art practice, especially in the use of color and shape.

I work full-time, and this September and October are particularly crazy due to travels, but I'll try to keep up.

Not sure what I was thinking, but the reference photos I picked and printed out all had really large areas of dark, so I ended up doing more of an eraser wipe-out and then a mono print instead of drawing drawing (see posts below).

• have a wonderful rest of day, everyone!

I reused leftover of the collages on the right and combined them like puzzle.

Love pre planning each shape value.

Love seeing what happens.

Sorry I will likely not be in zooms today as I am traveling. I will watch the recording of office hours if I don’t make it.

this or next unit will be the last one before my labor. I’m planning to finish this painting, and to go back to Two/Three values-extensions as much as I can

I want to change some lightest parts to a little darker

Go back to simple and think about preferences before the 3rd pass on oil..

Oil and I have a complicated relationship. I noticed in the last couple of years that I have certain expectation of how I "should" be painting in oil v.s. what actually works for me. Still figuring that out one piece at a time.

Testing the waters with this composition before diving into oil! In my head it looks a little bit like a hooded figure taking a quick snooze, maybe in between skulking and lurking around corners and alleyways. A wee bit mysterious.

3 hours

Colored pencil

I'm traveling for the next week but I'm just chomping at the bit to get back into this, as well as dive into the temperature unit, when I return!

This also makes me want to verify that my values across temperature are as close as possible. The ground shadow behind the cube should probably also go a bit darker to make the ground lighting less subtle. SO MUCH LEARNING

Sorry for the late notice. I’ve had my new family last week. She brought us new topics every day, and breast feeding is one of the most challenging parts. I still need to lay down as much as possible, and have to pay attention to her mostly. However, I’d like to enjoy reading instruction and listening to the lecture, and keep earning small progress in ways I can. Thanks and lots of love

4-value collage

Reference photo

3-value drawing with Pitt pens

Colored pencils

crayon on 4x6 paper

In the top one I painted over another version that I had started with the old palette, and I was trying to figure out how to handle the paint. I probably should have waited longer for the painting underneath to dry, because it felt difficult to handle and looks quite uneven.

Life side note: We finally made it out east and our belongings arrive tomorrow! I look forward to setting up my studio/desk space and jumping back in with y’all! 🤙

my favorite one is the hot orange shadow against the freezing wall, what a surprise but also makes sense thanks to the color system safety net (or "universal cheating system" - literally how I feel, ha!).

3 value fabric study

Pitt markers

Pitt pens

Pitt pens

Working on my figure-ground dissolution

I started with the warm light/cool shadow set and it surprised me how some values that seemed distinct on the palette really didn't read as that drastically different on the painting (like the white/light gray wall cool shadows for the black box template, top left).

By the time I got to the cool light/warm shadow set on the right, I think I felt more comfortable adjusting my values for how they were reading on the painting while still trying to maintain consistency in my value structure. I think I'd like to try these studies again with even more subtle tertiaries, since the blues here are blue-ing a bit more than I'd like.

After Artemesia Gentileschi

Fabric project

Template

Watercolor ink pens

I noticed one thing in all of Kimberly’s demos: the use of Williamsburg paint. I could tell from the demos that her paint just behaved very differently than Gamblin Artist Oils. So I got myself small tubes of Cad Orange, Ultramarine Blue, and Titanium White to try. And holy cow! The experience compared to Gamblin is night and day! The way this paint loads on the brush and lays on Arches paper is smooth and creamy, and I don’t feel like I’m fighting the absorbent surface of Arches paper as I have to with Gamblin. Wow, wow, wow! I had heard about the legendary paint quality of Williamsburg. But I didn’t realize the difference could be so huge! With Gamblin, I’m constantly tempted to reach for solvents to make the paint flow better. That is not the case with Williamsburg at all.

One negative I noticed is that I seem to go through a lot more paper towels with Williamsburg. Its creamier nature seems to eat through paper towels.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

PS: I won’t be winning awards for palette hygiene! 🫤

I was naughty and pushed the cad orange darker and a bit more neutral because my cad orange felt so off in the value 3 row.

I find figures incredibly challenging and am so thankful to have the opportunity to practice. I spent the entire 3 hours on this one drawing, and it's still not where I'd like it to be, but I can feel the growth potential.

Talking about temperature studies, I realized that last year I was only following the broad flow of the process. Watching KT's demo taught me this project requires more control over uniformity. Thank you for the organized platform, Kimmy T! It tells your thoughts and supports what I missed last year.

I plan to set just two palettes (warm and cool) and reexamine temperature relationships while considering the possibility of figure-ground dissolutions. But should I start intensity or fabric first ..?

While I maybe a bit off in my values and temperature, I learnt a lot in this unit!

Bottom: c/w, 1st pass

Cad Orange, Cobalt Blue

Here I used two lines of pallet- 5 values warm T and cool T. I made an effort to maintain color consistency, and to explain the forms by light/shadow relationships. I meant that I followed the instructions more carefully at this time. I’m satisfied with this so far.

Not sure why but my painting sometimes ends up as “looking at moon”, even though I haven’t aimed that.

Also I forgot to put a board behind the dried flowers, then the shadow shapes changed. Was the last shadow shape more interesting?

Watercolor pens

Warm light/cool shadow

Watercolor pens

I have a couple of questions here which other folks might have asked.

• If warm light hit a warm surface, it could be a hot color?

• If neutral surface is hit by different temperature light, colors could have options of warm T or cool T?

• If there are some variations, how can we choose the best relationship? What kind of impact viewers would have from that.

Cool light/warm shadow on the right

Here my thoughts are how to lead the light pass way from the front to the back (from the white cloth to the green cloth), how to describe the form of the transparent triangle ruler

Note for me: I reduced intensity around the wall and ground. I love his desaturated dark atmosphere, so I’d like to try it on mine. I prepared closer temperature T and applied it on some environments . Satisfied with plane change on some round small things

x

Warm light

Watercolor pens

Playing with Orange/blue tertiaries

I like the weird little triangle as the main character, but I don't know yet how I'll handle it.

One more gouache in temp before I’m away for the weekend and return to jump into oils!

I love building images.

The set up is done, but not resolved around the relationship of the size of forms.

Watercolor pens

Local peeps: join me Saturday, tomorrow, for a liferoom session in our Equinox Studio 5-8pm! Also opening solo show of MCA alumni!

Center two : maybe finished, make bigger if I want

right side: I will apply hue on the walls and the floor. Maybe warmer T on the back wall, some color on the square table cloth (floor). I’ll put the flower shape at the end.

I like the shapes dissolving into each other and the pathways in the middle iteration, and think that would be a fun version to play with and see how temperature/intensity reveals/dissolves even further. I might do that one alongside my original version, just because my brain likes seeing what effect these decisions have side-by-side.

On to temperature! 🔥🥶

The hues and temperatures aren’t all quite dialed-in here in this study, but I intend to do them correctly in my actual painting, including satelliting.

Watercolor pens

This iteration feels done. Next is her cool light sister

I’d like to make darker on the shadow side of body, and/or make warmer on the lighter side of the body. Also the environment can be more darker.

However, I used lots of paint and pallet knives. So I could avoid mixing colors on the surface which I usually be in trouble.

The paper itself was toned with a “satellited” yellow first.

This is 12x16, which is the largest I've ever painted 😅 but after the initial trepidation, it feels really nice to have my work take up a bit more space in my little studio corner. It's not as containable as my smaller pieces and it insists on being seen when I walk in. There's definitely something to be said for allowing my practice to take up more space both physically and figuratively in my life. Just some 10pm musings over here!

I found it particularly interesting, in the bottom left one, pushing an “orange” hue in three different directions to achieve a “cooler” shadow (pushing a yellow-orange more toward green, a red-orange more toward purple, and a middle orange more toward neutral 🤯) ! I think it’s working? Was really fun to think about in any case!

Warm Tertiary (Cad Org + Ult Blue) + Cad Yellow = 😍

Notes to self -- resolve couch temperature and jeans issues. Do I want to paint the curtain in temperature or leave in black and white like the figures?

One of the most gratifying things for me about the Atelier thus far is how I've learned so many strategies for returning to the same image. I cannot believe that I'm not bored out of my mind, but here I am still in love and returning. I was telling my husband that it's like intimacy and commitment--so rewarding to learn how to sustain this level of attention.

“The Annunciation”

Oil in Paper, 16” x 20”

2025

Hope y'all are having a fabulous holiday weekend! ✨

I'm excited about the choreography of shapes, and continue to ask the question, how do I paint relationships rather than things?

I think I'm ready to jump into satelliting on this next! I'll probably start a new one, but maybe continue working on this little guy as my "weird" iteration :)

And finally, finally satelliting! Enjoyed playing around with comparing what the same local color set might look like in warm vs. cool lighting and it was so mindbendy and fun.

I may revisit that teensy warm/cool one I posted below so I can get more technical practice in-- feeling the urge to scrape something! but I'm too attached to this one now, haha.