Saturday Plein Air - Park of Roses

Another beautiful but hot day. We painted at the Park of Roses and had over 25 painters today.

I've tried to paint the roses many times. I always get lost in the petals, so today I chose to paint a gnarly pine tree (my favorite tree to paint). The problem was that I had to paint way across the flower beds so I could be in the shade. The circle is around the tree I wanted to paint.

Wasn't really a problem for me. Here's a zoomed view:

Distant Pine, 6x6, pastel on dark grey Pastelmat

Finally a Nice Day for Plein Air

We've been having rotten weather on Saturdays for plein air. Finally the weather has shifted. I took today off work to make it a 4 day weekend, so I asked my friend Donna if she wanted to paint this morning.

We headed to Inniswood Metro park but never made it out of the parking lot! This view caught our eye:

Donna was smart, and setup in the shade under the trees in the middle of the parking lot. I decided to work out of the back of my car much closer. I didn't think the sun would be THAT hot.... ha. Here's a few process shots. I was test driving a new little tinkering project for a lightweight pastel painting surface:

I got this far and finally had to retreat to the shade with Donna.

We both got to the point where we were going to noodle around too much with details, so we decided to head out for lunch. Here's a shot of both our setups. It's an odd angle, so mine is not as tiny as it looks here.... My tinkering project needed tweaked so I modified it this afternoon and will give the new model a spin tomorrow.

 Here's how my painting turned out. I was just using NuPastels today as an experiment which led to the bold colors. A bit out of my normal palette.

My First Pastel Workshop

Some friends have been pushing me to hold a pastel workshop so I finally did! I decided to organize an invitational pastel workshop with some of my painting buddies. I wanted some honest input from them at the end. They all gave me a thumbs up to do it again!

This time, it was held this weekend in the lovely rolling hills in Ohio's Amish country. I rented a 7 bedroom house on the top of a ridge, which had a nice area to work in a converted garage. Here is the view and some of our neighbors:

We met on Friday evening and worked until late afternoon Sunday.  Here's the gang!

Here are some of the exercise examples I had prepared ahead of time, along with some of my weekend's demos. We were working in pastels on sanded paper with wet underpaintings.

Several of the students were so dedicated, I had to drag them out of the studio at 9pm Saturday night.

We had a great time, and they produced some great art!

If anyone is interesting in scheduling a workshop by me in your venue, please let me know!

Saturday Plein Air - Alum Creek Old Park Office Pond

Today dawned COLD and grey, in the forties. Expecting the weather to improve, I didn't dress warm enough! Even the swallows looked puffed up trying to keep warm. There was also a bald eagle circling the pond while we worked!

Even so, a good number of artists met at the old park office at Alum Creek. There is a nice little pond there with a path all the way around. With the grey overcast sky, there wasn't a subject matter that really appealed to me, but tried to settle in and paint.

I worked about an hour and a half and finally had to stop - too cold! It could use some work, but I will just leave this as is:

Saturday Plein Air - Indian Run

Finally, Mother Nature blessed us with a beautiful Saturday morning! This view of the dead, twisted tree caught my eye, and although I needed to face the sun to paint, I put on my visor and gave it a shot.

I worked on a piece of putty colored 320 grit Pastel Premier today. This is a bit too rough for my taste.

I thought I had taken several in-process shots but only have a few. One from my camera in the field at the beginning, one mid-painting from cellphone, then one from studio.

I could do more but will leave this painting as was done in the field.

Did you Know? Reuse Pastelmat?

I recently learned that I could wipe out a failed pastel painting on Pastelmat paper! That paper is one of my favorites as it grabs the pastel and holds on tight with very little dust. I thought I'd try removing a little 5x7 painting. Here is the before:

 The magic removal tool? Baking soda! You sprinkle dry baking soda on the paper, and rub it around with your hands until most of the old painting is removed. This was a medium grey color paper and this technique removed quite a bit of the painting.

I decided to paint a pastel version of an oil painting I did plein air as reference - top middle of this photo:

 And here's the finished little pastel:

Not bad, but not sure I'd bother removing an old pastel on a large sheet of Pastelmat this way.

While my hands were dusty, I got both my Heilman pastel boxes out and organized them for the upcoming plein air season! Yes, I like lots of greens and blues for my landscapes. These are the "Double Sketchbox" (smaller size one) and the "Backpacker" size Heilmans. These are the best pastel cases made - beautiful workmanship!

Backpacker size

Double Sketchbox size