Sunday, December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas!

Look what Santa left for me! I've been a very good girl this year!

2012 Scion xB, Army Rock metallic

Friday, December 16, 2011

Saturday, December 03, 2011

Studio Work - Pastel Abstracts?

I thought I would try to do some abstracts with my pastels. I decided to just play around, so used some Colourfix coated paper. I used a dark brown grey colored paper, and decided to put some gouache on it to tone it further. Then to try to have an interesting palette, I used a split complimentary palette.

Colourfix paper with gouache to tone
Pastel choices
 For a composition, I decided to take one of my landscape photos and try to use it just for the shape of the design. I was hoping to move it into an abstract completely away from the landscape. You can see the photo in the upper left corner of the picture below. I then did a thumbnail sketch (upper right -below).
first pass with pastels




Hmmm. You can see that it never moved into an abstract. I then decided I didn't like the portrait shape layout of the painting as there wasn't enough interest in the lower portion of the painting. So because I was using a paper support instead of canvas, it was easy enough to cut the painting into the shape that I liked better.

Finished painting

Then I had the lower hunk of the paper leftover:
  I played around with it a bit further:
 And this is what I ended up with:
As I have said in the past, sanded pastel papers are not my favorite choice. Way too much dust and hard for me to control.  I really don't know why I don't use my favorite, even if I just plan on playing.

Tomorrow is to be a rainy day, so I think I will get the oils and palette knife back out and see if I have better luck. I received some sample paints in the mail this week, and will see what I can do with those.