I just wanted to let people know, if you are interested in seeing more designs for cards or whatever, I have several that I never posted here, but I did on  my Facebook Merry Kohn Studio .  Some turned out pretty well, and some, just playing around. But many odds and ends that I didn’t bother with creating a whole entry for here. To tell the truth, it seems enough like rambling to me.

Even as an artist myself, while I very much enjoy seeing the finished product of someone’s work, I do not want to hear about the process. Not interesting to me. As I have said before, the work should speak for itself. If it doesn’t, it probably needs more work.

“Garden Fantasy”   Size: Whatever you want it to be

A friend of mine asked me what I would do if someone wanted to buy one of the paintings from the “Sketchbook”. They don’t exist. But they are no different from my actual sketchbook where I use pencil to do sketches of upcoming paintings. They are just in a lot more detail than my pencil sketches.

Though, I have to note, I can’t add the special effects in my paintings. My little fairies will have to glow in the imaginations of my clients.

And over the years, I’ve done many paintings that existed initially in the minds of collectors who had an idea they wanted me to create a painting from. The one hurdle there was that when I’d get a commission, I knew they had an image fully formed of what it would look like. No matter how hard I tired, it was not going to be possible for me to recreate an idea from their head. It was just not possible.  With this, I could possibly build a painting before hand to show what it would look like.  And see how close the ideas were.

So for me, I see the possibility of using this as a very detailed sketch for a upcoming painting. I’ve actually been very lucky with my commissions though, I must say. In the almost, *yikes* , thirty-five years I’ve been at this, I had only one commissioned work that was not acceptable. I have had to tweak a painting here and there but the one that was summarily rejected came after  the request that I change the color of the sky.  That was pretty much the one thing that I couldn’t do.  Oh well! One out of 1,291. Not bad.

The fascination for me in using this to put my ideas down in, is that I can go back and remove entire elements of them or moving sections of the background, making them larger to add elements, and all without recreating the whole painting.  It is a very different process for me.

And lately, for me at least, the art business is anything but entertaining. So to have a new toy to use , the program and the tablet I am learning, has put some of the fun back in my work.

And, as if to prove my point, I am looking at this image and criticizing the fact that there are two purple flower and two orange ones as well.  That won’t do. Not to worry! I can fix that easily.

“Fairies in Love”

I’ve been asked about my painting, How do you do it?”  My only answer is, it’s easy, peasy. Because for me it is. Of course, if you consider that, if you’ve been practicing something for almost thirty-five years, you get to be  proficient at it. I’ve certainly had to learn quite a bit about what I do. 

When I first started painting in this style, I drew everything out in pencil. I didn’t trust myself to put a brush down on canvas and know which way to go next. As for my little people, I have definitely come a long way.

As you can see below, yes, I paint them naked first. Shock! Horror! I found early on, painting little pants and attaching shirts and plugging heads and arms into them just didn’t look right. I remember one painting I did many years ago that had an entire school yard of children playing. I was showing it to a client at the gallery where I was showing and as we were looking at it on the wall, I was very embarrassed to see an empty pair of pants running down the hill at the back.

The client was very understanding and did buy the painting. I had to take it back home to my studio and plug in the missing child. From there I decided there must be a better way. I started painting the whole person in first, get the body language going and then, dress them. And that how I still do it.

So, here is my latest painting, the first of the new year. It’s called “Butterfly Parade Too”. From start to finish.

After I do a background, I start with my little people, with arms and legs going in the right directions.

Then, working back to front, I put on , in this case, their costume wings, and then, faces, and their hair.

 

I detail their costumes next. Then clothing and shoes, pants and dresses, whatever will be on top of the wings.

 

Then last, the rest of the details. The buttons and bows and ribbons. Then the birds, dogs, odds and ends, that I feel, make the painting come to life.

I remember telling someone once, that the hardest part of my painting for me was, that it is painting mostly on faith. Because for about 90% of the time I am painting on them, they simply don’t look like they are going to work. I just know that after a thousand and some paintings that, in the end, they do come together, and they will work.

 

So for me painting is easy. It’s the web page that is hard!