DPW Painting Challenge - Help Japan Challenge - SOLD

I have posted an older watercolor on the DPW Painting Challenge auction to benefit victims in Japan. Click below,

http://www.dailypaintworks.com/Challenge/FC50B15D-5016-4E5E-87F2-87C3F79BA65B

SOLD!

Leaf and Butterfly

Last Saturday at the MAC - Carnations

Today was the last Saturday my group will be painting inside - next week we will go plein air. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. We had several still lifes of flowers setup to paint today. I chose yellow carnations which I brought from home.

This is pastels on suede mat board. The mat board was bright scarlet red. You might see some of it peaking through. The first photo shows the painting midway through. The final photo is after finished it at home. It was difficult to get a true color photo, but I am pleased with this painting.

DPW - White Vase

I painted a piece for the DPW Painting Challenge. This week's challenge was to paint something white laying on a colorful cloth.  I felt like I overworked this. I was hoping to be more selective with brushstrokes but blended more than I intended.

Pastel - Foothills

"Foothills" - 8 x 10 - pastel on suede mat board

Play - Pastel Underpaintings

I recently bought the new book Pastel Pointers by Richard McKinley. The book included a DVD in which Richard showed how to use wet underpaintings. I thought I'd give it a try. I am not a fan of sanded papers, but had some leftovers of several brands, and decided to experiment. I used UArt, LeCarte and later - Wallis.

In the photo below you will see two UArt papers on the left and a LeCarte paper bottom right. I have blocked in the composition using the reference photo on the top right. I used the same colors of hard pastels for all.

Then I tried several different wet washes to see which I liked the best. In the photo below you will see that I added Wallis to the experiment. Because the LeCarte's grit was dissolved (you can see the white patches), I just threw that away. Because LeCarte uses a vegetable based grit, it was too fragile for a wet wash.

You can see that the Wallis was the most vibrant and had a nice watercolor effect. The others were pretty boring. I then started to add more color with softer pastels to all three papers. I really didn't like the feel of the UArt paper and since the Wallis was much more interesting, I worked on that alone. Below, you will see the finished painting. It was a good experiment overall, but I still don't really enjoy using sanded papers. I prefer a softer feel and suede mat board is my favorite.

Play Two

Play

Stepped into the studio this evening just to play with pastels. Just a simple quick sketch.