sanctuary

Finished! This was a complicated piece from a reference photo taken on one of our dog-walks. I kept the composition of the photo but pushed the color. Click on the image to enlarge for details.

coming along

The painting on my easel is coming along - I'm working pastel back to front, top to bottom but had to put in the moss covered branch to get a feel for the yellow-green and how it plays against the other colors. Lots of digging in the garden and no painting this weekend but I'll be back to it tomorrow, Monday.

One of my blog readers emailed me asking what became of that upper right corner. Here it is now as part of the whole painting.

underpainting

 I love this as a finished painting! 

But it is a detail shot of the upper right corner of an oil-wash foundation... 

the preparation for a pastel painting of the Pacific Northwest woods.

See the complete underpainting below.

presto, change-o!

 Out with the old....I brushed off a painting to use the surface again.

 Next, I applied a thin oil-wash as a loose composition of the next painting.

The finished pastel painting is another from the Golden Gardens Park, Seattle series. This one is a tangle of natural foliage along the bank of the pond. One of the goals of reworking old art is to be able to put it right back into the existing frame. I had a double mat on the original painting but this scene needed a little more room so I gained an inch all the way around by removing the bottom mat. The window is now 14.5 x 14.5 inches. The title is "Forsaken."

winter pond

This is my impression of the pond at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle. For this 25 x 25 inch painting (large for me), I started at the top and worked down instead of skipping all over.

thrice

This is another scene of our driveway. I've painted it twice before as "Light Show II" and "The Good Road Home." This version was painted more quickly because it is smaller than the other two and has a more abstract feel. "Sunset" is 8.25 x 8.25 inches. The top photo shows the reference photo and the painting as an oil foundation before any pastel was applied. I'm using the paper of an old painting - I think it is 140lb Lanaquarelle watercolor paper covered with red pumice gesso mixture.

know when to walk away

This isn't the first time I've titled a blog post "know when to walk away." When I hear the lyrics of The Gambler begin to play in my head, I try to heed the advice and step away from the easel. I've been working slow and steady on this 25 x 25 inch painting with no major setbacks or wipe offs. I'm very happy with it but it is good to be finished and to be able to move on to the next one I have in mind that will be a very different palette.

grayscale and noseprints

I'm working on another painting of the dog park. I thought I better check my values against the reference photo to get the mood right. Photographing your work-in-progress and changing the image to grayscale is very helpful. While I work, Annie is doing her own noseprint painting on the studio window.