Still working in pastel

I keep being drawn to working in pastel. It's such fun! The flowers may not be done because my painting and critique group thought I should have more defined stems. I'm still thinking on that. Thoughts?

I once lived with the view that's the landscape. I've been scanning old slides and found the reference photo there. It's 14" x 20" and I started with an underpainting of orange under the lower part and light blue under the sky. I deliberately painted it with saturated colors, my favorites, and if you click on the photo here to see the larger view you'll see how saturated the colors really are. I thought it would take a long time to paint, but it went very quickly. Critiques, please!

Anticipating Adulthood

I made some revisions on this today and I think I'm done now. One of my painting friends suggested the title.

Splash!

Here's that same cute, blond son again, a bit older here. Pastel again. Am I finished? If not, what's to be done?

What's In Here?

Inspired by a photo I took of my youngest son in 1973. It's pastel and I don't know whether it's finished . . . critiques invited. As usual, the colors are brighter if you click on the one here to see the larger version.

Spring Fields

A pastel from a slide taken somewhere in England in 1984. If this was the US, these fields would probably be growing houses now, 25 years later. I got to use some of the pastels I'd ordered which came today. New colors and new pastels are so exciting! This painting is 14" x 20" or thereabout.

Azaleas

. . . or are they rhododendrons? I took the photo inspiration for this pastel at a Philadelphia-area arboretum a couple of years ago at a paint-out. It's pastel. Complicated and large (14" x 20") and less than half way through I wondered if I was crazy even to try it. I don't know how to do a very specific drawing on sanded, pastel paper, so I kept getting lost in all the petals. I invite critiques. As usual, you can see a larger, more vibrant version by clicking on the one here.

Philadelphia Water Color Society Members' Exhibition

Each of the last few years PWCS has had a members' show in addition to the large, prestigious, hard-to-get-into Anniversary Exhibition. The members' show is juried from the painting itself rather than from slides (or digital starting this year) so only those close enough to the venue are able to enter. Nevertheless, this year the members' show had almost 120 entries of which only slightly more than half could fit in the gallery where it's being shown. AND I GOT IN. As always with PWCS, the show is "works on paper" which includes all watermedia, collage (with some restrictions) and pastel. I entered this collage, made of paper I made myself from shredded paper waiting to be recycled. When I first did the collage, I used string, which you see here, but later I made more paper and rolled it to be the "string" because one of the collage restrictions is that all elements must be of paper. The collage itself is 22" x 30"; a full sheet of watercolor paper. Now, if only I could get into the Anniversary Exhibition! It's coming up this summer.

Daffodils . . . again

As I painted the pastel version, I wanted to do the blossoms large, so this is on a half sheet, rather than the quarter sheet sizes of the other versions. I painted the background blue with watercolors, then did the flowers over the blue, so maybe this is technically a mixed media painting. I think the center of the bottom trumpet needs to be a bit darker. This is the last pastel for a while because I started a watercolor today.

Spring

After those snowy paintings, I decided it was time for spring to arrive, so I dug out a photo of daffodils for inspiration. The daffodils in my garden are not quite blooming. I did it first in watercolor and then pastel. making no attempt to make the drawings identical to each other or the photo. As I worked on the watercolor version, I kept thinking of an AAMilne poem from When We Were Very Young entitled Daffydowndilly. So you don't have to look it up, here it is:
She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
"Winter is dead."
As always, I invite critiques . . . and you can see better versions by clicking on the small ones here.

Front Gate

Or "Winter Series No. 2." Another pastel I did today. I had the same sort of underpainting as the one yesterday. It's fun to see the whole mood and temperature shift as I apply the pastel over the hot oranges and reds. There is a point, however, where the underpainting is distracting and I have to hurry to at least block in the colors I want.

Morning Walk

We have crocuses and early daffodils blooming and I decided to paint winter today. Go figure; usually I want to anticipate a season. I needed to do something entirely different after all my versions of Nonna, so I got out my pastels and printed a photo I'd taken one snowy morning this winter while I was walking the dogs. I love my new iPhone, with its included camera! Before I put on pastels, I did an underpainting on the Wallis, sanded paper with liquid watercolors. I love the way underpaintings sneak a bit of themselves through the pastel and enliven the final painting.

Nonna

Well, obviously I didn't finish writing about the Don Anderson workshop, and I won't now.

A few years ago, I painted this grandmother whose photo I'd taken at the Saturday market in Buonconvento, Tuscany. It was bought by a man who wanted to know how I'd known his mother to paint her picture. It isn't his mother. For the workshop, I went through old photos looking for ones with high contrast and connected darks. I painted her in the workshop but there were too many things wrong with the paint application, mostly caused by time pressure and not letting layers, especially the dark ones, dry long enough (or at all!). After the workshop, I painted her again, a half-sheet (14" x 20") and liked it much better. Then I decided that I would try painting it a full sheet: it seems like it might make it into some juried show and full sheets are more arresting, at least for the viewers if not for the juror. This is the full sheet version. It took a long time to paint, both because of the drying time and because for the darkest portions I had to work up my nerve. The darks have a lot of odd areas to cover and keep from dripping.

Don Andrews Workshop, day 2

I did this barn today, from a photo I took at Winterthur Gardens last summer. The critique suggested that I darken the top of the lefthand tree, somehow connect the window on the front of the barn with the shadow, and one other thing that I've forgotten but have written down in my sketchbook which is at the art center. Don talked today about making these juicy, multicolored washes, about making good neutrals (gray: ultramarine blue and burnt siena, for one), and making mud. We all thought we could teach the last subject! I'm a bit pooped, but this is lots of fun. Do click on the smaller version here to see the larger, more colorful one.

Don Andrews Workshop, day 1

Our local art center is sponsoring a 5-day workshop with Don Andrews. Even after only one day . . . a long one . . . I can recommend him as a teacher.

His painting style is not mine, at all, but it's interesting to try his method. He paints in lots of layers, but I wouldn't call it glazing. He starts with the lightest value (leaving some white of the paper) and works toward the darkest, not necessarily waiting for things to dry but using the same color(s) over each other to build up the value. I tend to be a direct, slap-it-on painter so this takes some restraint on my part. On the other hand, he uses lots of colors, often letting them mingle on the paper which is on an easel set quite steeply. He also talks a lot about various elements of composition such as value, hue, value, placement of elements, value, focal area, etc. So this is what I did today (at the bottom). It's from my head and I see I have a nice, dark worm moving through the middle ground, not an unusual occurrence for me when I make something up. Basically I'm happy with what I did.

Here are a couple of photos I took during Don's demo. The right one is when he has put on a couple of layers of light value and the left is where the painting was when we left today. I assume it's finished, but only he knows.

Rub My Tummy

This was painted on gesso-coated board with the lighter tones lifted. It's Amari in a very familiar position. The title says it all!