Winged wanderers in progress

 

My newest piece, Social Butterflies, is currently in progress.

Lately, I've been experimenting with combining different mediums alongside my usual colored pencil work. For this piece, I started with a watercolor base and then layered Prismacolor colored pencils, Pan Pastels, gouache, and water-soluble colored pencils on top. It's been a process of trying different techniques and materials, adding layers, and seeing where the artwork takes me.

While I probably won't create another piece using quite this many mediums at once, this experiment has given me some ideas. Moving forward, I'd like to explore combining watercolor and colored pencil more intentionally—working back and forth between the two throughout the creative process.

Experimenting and learning new approaches is one of my favorite parts of making art!

The Crown

The Crown (c)2017  9.5x7.5  $900 colored pencil

Sometime around 1875  Elias J “Lucky” Baldwin brought over from India a modest number of peafowl for his ranch in Arcadia.  After he passed away his daughter sold off the ranch to the state of California and Los Angeles county, which together bought 111 acres. The Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden was then created and is an official wildlife sanctuary with some 250 different species strutting the grounds of the arboretum!

I love seeing these residents every time I visit the arboretum, and no matter how many times I have seen them through the years,  it's still thrilling!!

 Come out to the LA Arboretum and Garden in Arcadia, CA on March 25th for Peacock Day!! The Pasadena Society of Artists Peacock Exhibition is in the library with the reception from 5-7pm

Listen to the whispers of Nature.

 Hear the wisdom of the trees. Allow your soul to sing.

~Lazaris~

For the last few months I've been on the hunt for ducks (with cool reflections) in the LA area. I want to create a colored pencil drawing for the Pencil Art Societies International exhibition in August. You would think it would be an easy thing to do, but as it turns out, not so much!! Through a friend who runs tho, I found the Arroyo in Pasadena, CA. It wasn't a large area and to be honest it was pretty much strewn with litter...ugh, thanks Californians. But I hit the jackpot and found two different types of  mallard ducks with babies! To my recollection, I have never seen a female mallard with a blue stripe before. I scoured the internet, searching for answers, but could not find any, so I have an email in to "AskaNaturalist.com"...hopefully I'll get my answer soon! 

I have some good photo references to choose from, so the hunt is over, but stay tuned as I hope to start it at the beginning of June. I have a bear to get to first!

In all things of nature...

...there is something of the marvelous.

~Aristotle~

San Luis Obispo, Morro Bay, Pismo Beach, Lompoc, Los Osos

Dolores and friends

With Quiet Solitude aka Edgar completed, I'm diving right into my next drawing, a duck I named Dolores.

Quiet Solitude  Kathryn Hansen  (c) 2014 7.25x10.25

I spotted this beautiful Mallard duck in Santa Barbara while on vacation with my super fun girlfriend at the Botanic gardens on the out skirts of town. Its leisurely paths take you thru a small redwood forest, native plants, and a lovely pond filled with birds and turtles!

With some luck I should have Dolores done in time to enter into a gallery exhibit in the San Fernando, Ca area.

The Peace of Wild Things

“When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be. I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free”

~Wendell Berry~

Inspired to do a portrait of one the many beautiful white egrets I saw at Lake Balboa last weekend!

clear a path by walking it, boldly

tara sophia mohr

 Watchful (c) 2012  Kathryn Hansen

boy...i am soo happy to be done with this piece...the ivy was really starting to drive me crazy! in the past i would have just abandoned it, yet always lingering in the back of my mind as yet another drawing that was never completed...i have quite a stack of those! so i guess i am proud that i didn't let this one slide...that i stuck it out even tho i really wanted to draw something else...like the giraffe below. which i am loving because i am really seeing how daffy looking giraffes are...not that i didn't notice before but when so intimately involved with drawing a subject it just really dawns on you!!