Waht a difference a mat makes!

The seagulls are now in their mat and ready to travel to their new home. I think my cousin will be very pleased. I can't wait to see it in the frame.

Flying Away

The seagulls are finished. I took the piece down to my framer yesterday to have a mat and backer cut for it because I didn't have a mat board color that would work. The work itself is about 16x27. It is going to go into a 24x36 frame. This work is done on Colorfix sanded paper in pastels.

Here is a close-up of the gulls. There is color reflected from the sky and the sand in the white and grey of their bodies. According to my research, these are a variety of gull called a Laughing Gull.

One finished piece

This week has been extremely busy, but I have still managed to get a little work in on my paintings and I actually have two finished. Here is the little girl that I started with my student last week. I am very pleased with the way she turned out. The finished size is 9x12.

The work continues

I am making some progress on the seagulls. Here is what they look like after yesterday's work. A little more later today and some time tomorrow and I should be close to finished. This one is more like a painting-a-week!

Lots of work, but little to show!

Lest you think I have been slacking off, let me assure that I am still working. This week I have worked up the drawing for my lesson next week. Today I started the seagull painting that I really need to have finished by the beginning of March. There isn't much to show, but here it is. I am working in pastel on Colorfix paper which is a sanded surface. So far I just have the sky and the sand. Becasue this is a very large piece (16x27), I used the pan pastels and a sponge applicator to lay in the sky and the sand. Now I can move on to my regular soft pastels to begin working on details. Tomorrow I can start on the grasses and next week finish up with the seagulls.

On my easel

Today I have three different meetings to attend so life is getting in the way of doing a completed small piece. But, I still have something to share. My student this morning wanted to start on a portrait of a little girl. This is a not anyone special, it is a little girl she found in a very old Walter Foster book on portraits. The book is so old that the price printed on the cover is $1.00!! In any event, we started on that project this morning. We are working in pastel on Mi-Teintes paper. The size is 9x12. This is as far as we got today. We will work on her again next week. I suspect it will take another two lessons to finish her.

A new week, a new project

Continuing my painting-a-day exercise, I was out running an errand this morning and found a little stuffed chick that chirps when you hold it in the palm of your hand. It was cheap and cute. The challenge was to turn something that is essentially a fuzzy yellow blob with beady black eyes, a plastic beak, and a plastic base with feet that houses the batteries into something that looks like more than just a blob. So today was all about texture. He is about 5x5 and is done in pastel on fine sanded paper.