Monday painting

Today's painting is a little 3x5 pastel on board of iris. I was experimenting with the Pan Pastels on the background. They are very nice and blend easily to create nice color mixes and lay down in a very smooth application.

Friday's Challenge

Today I challenged myself to take a single sketch and make two different small paintings from it. I did the sketch during a meeting I was attending yesterday afternoon. There was a plant in the lobby that I could see from the meeting room and I roughly sketched it in my notes. One version of the branch is primarily a cool palette with warm yellow-green accents. The surface is a 4x5 Masonite board that I apparently painted with a base coat of green acrylic paint a while ago.

The second version is a primarily warm palette and is painted on a 3x5 fine-grained canvas attached to a board. The warmer version is more vibrant and exciting. The smaller board forced a different placement of the subject and the result was a more interesting design as well.

I didn't like working on the acrylic base. It was grainy but the texture was uneven and it was difficult to apply the pastel the way I wanted. It would not be my first choice for a surface. The canvas was not bad to work on but would take a bit of getting used to.

Thursday's Effort

I am sticking to my plan of a painting a day. I am giving myself 1-2 hours in the morning to work on and complete a small painting. Here is today's painting. It is called "Gardening". It is pastel on 5x7 grey pastel board.

Painting for today

I have decided to try to make time to do a small painting every day. Today I got out the pastels once again and another 5x7 pastel board. This little piece is sketched from a set-up of a little Longaberger basket filled with small artificial pears and apples. For the background, I applied several colors and then used a watercolor brush and denatured alcohol to blend them together. Notice the left-hand light source. This is a challenge for me as I am so completely right dominant!

Today's Painting

I spent a little time after my student left this morning playing with my pastels. I had a 5x7 Pastel Board that I wanted to try out. This product is made by Ampersand. It has a sanded (textured) surface and comes in grey, sand or white. I used the sand colored surface for this piece.

Pastel Sketch

This is a small experimental version of what will ultimately be a much larger piece. It is done on Mi-Teintes paper with soft pastels and is about 9x12. The final version of the piece will be approximately 16x28 to fit in a very large frame. It is time to get it up on my easel and start working on it.

Busy Christmas Season

I have been very busy since Thanksgiving with orders for pet portraits. They are completed now and I will be delivering the last of them soon. Most of them were done in colored pencil, however, this one is in pastel. This little guy was sitting in front of a fan and it is his "Mom's" favorite photo.