Many thanks to Kay Dewar of Dewar Design for my yearly website update. The painting on my homepage is "Shades of Summer," a ...

More studio cleaning: this is a small colored pencil drawing done with a French Gray grisaille (tonal foundation). I taught this techniq...

  Look what I found in a bottom drawer in the studio. This was the kind of art I was doing 50 years ago. Holy Moly I'm old! Fa...

A misty ridge of dancing tree forms, "Windmist" is the final painting from the summer of 2013 series. It is available for purcha...

A painting sabbatical doesn't stop the need for the business of art. It is time to have my website updated with the archive of 2013 ...

I loved the wildness of the neglected property but to make this place our home we had to clean it up. After the old smelly cabin wa...

Our new lake property came with a rotting 1928 cabin. We had it demolished a few days ago. Now, on to new house plans and a new studio. Ya...

This summer I painted a dozen small pastel paintings 'from the heart.' No reference photos, just me and my pastel sticks working ...

Two months ago I completed a painting titled "Long Time Passing" and mentioned at that time that I'd share the backstory in th...

This is my Pastel Journal magazine collection, 2001 through 2012, complete except for the February 2011 issue ( where is it? I have looked...

Step 9 - Complete with Details The last step of my work is to add details . I believe that a good painting shoul...

Step 8 - Add Transparency To achieve the look of translucency, I hold my pastel stick so the side of the pastel, not the tip...

Step 7-Enhancing the Atmosphere Adding a lavender purple will soften and unify the other colors. I apply pastel veils of co...

Step 6-Play with Your Colors I have not planned the color scheme of this painting in advance because I do not want to transform the p...

Step 5-Create an Atmosphere The mood of a painting is set by composition, color, color temperature and pastel technique. Here, the ho...

--> Step 4-Bring dynamism to the painting A complete set of values ​​will bring force to your tableau. The lightest value li...

--> Step 3-Define Volume I live in an area where the sky is often overcast.   I love these neutral and gray skies, which a...

Step 2-Simplify the Subject My landscapes are my impressions of a place, not a copy of it.   I do not want to paint every leaf and eve...

 Follow Your Heart  |  pastel  |  10.5 x 12 inches  This is a reference photo of the scene at Point Defiance Park, Tacoma, Washin...

It's official. My husband and I finally own property on the lake where we have been looking for many years. With this dream coming int...

I am honored to be included in the No. 111 edition of the French magazine, Pratique des Arts! Of course, I don't speak or read French bu...

All together now...the nine small pastels from this summer. They are for review first by a collector of my work then some or all will be ...

I'm ending the week with "Windmist," pastel,  7.5 x 7 inches. I think that will be the last of these small paintings for a w...

This little painting took a lot of work, trial and error, patience and perseverance - a metaphor for life. For my lush life, I am enjoying...

Every once in a while I have a day of "spinning my wheels." To me, a good day is a productive day. That's a problem. I kno...

Same colors but in different combinations and amounts. This is Afternoon Passage, pastel, 7.5 x 7.5 inches.

To continue my post of yesterday, a backlit tree-lined hilltop has emerged. Apparently there are many backlit scenes in my memory. ...

You may know that I have a habit of washing off pastel paintings and reworking them from the ghost-image up. This time, I cut up an old p...

Here's a shot of my new plein air pal...the Pastel Porter . It arrived yesterday (an award from the recent PSWC show). I had a chance ...

The days following my Landscape Impressions workshop were spent with my two grandsons (ages 11 and 13) to make a busy, fun summer week. I ...

Five artists joined me for my two-day plein air pastel workshop, Landscape Impressions 2013. We had gorgeous weather for what might become...

Warming up for my Landscape Impressions workshop next week. The first step is an acrylic underpainting. Pastel painting of our little p...

My last post was about painting from memory. The painting above left is a memory painting; the one on the right was painted from a referenc...

This week I painted from memory. No reference photos, no plein air painting. It was freeing and exciting and was reminiscent of the year o...

Good days in the studio! I think I have a "nuance" series going on here in pastel. Minimum detail - loving it.

More playing in the studio. Another 7.5 x 7.5 pastel in cool colors on a warm day.  Soft focus, loose, interpretive with minimum detail.

To fill requests of the galleries who kindly represent me, the first half of the year has been spent painting more of the kind of work th...

After early-morning watering of the flower gardens and blueberries, I closed the windows and doors against the heat and spent the rest of ...