Nursery Violas

Pastel on Wallis, 6x6

Daily painting of yellow violas we purchased for the garden. They are still in the plastic nursery pot.

I changed the background on this small piece a number of times looking for the right balance of tone and temperature.

Dune Shadows

Dune Shadows 

9x12 Pastel on Multimedia Artboard

This is my first painting on Multimedia Artboard.  The surface holds layer after layer of pastel, which I like.  Because the surface has some texture, I can render interesting nuances of tone and personality.

Autumn Pines, Study 1

Autumn Pines, Study 1

In this view of the salt marsh, my attention was drawn to the stand of pine trees with the sunlight streaming through the branches and the underbrush.

I sometimes get distracted in the painting process so I have started using a check list.  Here is a copy of the list I worked from for this painting.

Blue on Yellow

Pastel on Wallis, 9x6

I set this arrangement with blue plumbago flowers. Unfortunately, this painting was done mostly from photographs because the plumbago flowers began to droop almost immediately. I set these flowers in a small, Portuguese pitcher against a light yellow fabric drop.  About 10 last night I went back to look at the painting with the idea of throwing it out.  In a fit of desperation, I picked up the deepest yellow in my box and went to work. That added life by "punching" the yellow in the drop and the lavender in the shadows.

Patty's Cassia

"Patty's Cassia" - pastel on Wallis, 6x6
This was my effort for today.  I've had cassia flowers in a vase for the last two days, but did not find time to paint them until today.  I punched the colors for the background in order to emphasize the glorious yellow of the flowers.

"Amy's Anise"

"Amy's Anise" 9x9 on Wallis

I was inspired by a demo last Saturday by Donna Biggee for the First Coast Pastel Society.  I have not devoted myself to a "daily painting" routine for some time, but here is my effort for today.  It took my some time to get a still life display set up - I'm out of practice.

This little saki vase was just right form some anise blossoms that our neighbor had brought over. I wanted to capture the contrast between the dark orange blossoms on the bright blue of the vase.

Reason for not painting...

In case anyone is interested, here are 3 of the pieces of the kidney stone that sidelined me for June and most of the month of July.  The stone was originally 7.7 mm.  The largest chunk I recovered was almost 5x3 mm.