March Newsletter
Happy April! Pumped we made it here, as March felt endless. It was tough for personal reasons as well as nationally, not to mention the totally uncharacteristic freezing cold So Cal weather. It had its good moments too though. We took full advantage of the few nice days we had and visited the beautiful tulips at Descanso Gardens with Lucie. We also secured a daycare for her starting in June! It’s going to be tough getting her used to it, but I’m very excited for the extra painting hours I’ll have a few days a week. On that note, stay tuned for a fall-released collection I’m hoping to create this summer.
In March I also was able to complete my very first oil landscape painting! It was thanks to the help/inspiration of Chris Fornataro’s(aka the Paint Coach) paint week challenge. He is excellent at simplifying what I would normally over-complicate, and I feel like I finally had a breakthrough. And if you’re a painter as well, you should check out some of his youtube tutorials here - he’s got some great methods.
I’ve since started a second landscape, but lets just say its been a bit more of a challenge without the coach’s guidance. I’m hoping I can share it with you in next month’s newsletter.
I also got some more Loomis head practice in(see this newsletter if you’re not sure what that is), but I need about 6 extra hours in the day to get where I want to be with it. That said, I’m finding that having goals set in each of these monthly newsletters is helping to push me to work on things I might not normally work on, so I’m going to set a slightly harder goal of a finished head drawing for the next newsletter.
While I’m developing a love for landscapes, I still think it’s really hard to beat the emotions and feelings that portraits can pull out of you - so I’m looking forward to using this Loomis knowledge for some oil portraits.
March’s Featured Painting
When possible, I’m going to start featuring a painting each month - whether it be a pet portrait, people portrait, landscape or still life. I’ll kick it off with this commissioned pet portrait a client bought to surprise her sister with.
This is Quincy, a very handsome boy. According to his mom he is a stubborn, old soul - and very loyal. I couldn’t resist testing him out in one of our vintage frames. It makes me want to collect one of a kind frames and offer them as an add-on to pet portrait gifts. Is this something you might be interested in? Feel free to email me at kate@katesypek.com with your thoughts!
Anyway, I’ll wrap it up here and hope that April is better, warmer, more exciting, and more productive than March was. See you all soon <3