My latest pastel paintings, "Monday Stroll in the Park" and "Morning Flight"

"Monday Stroll in the Park"

This is the result of several firsts for me, I am not completely satisfied with the result. 

For one, I bought a new set of pastels from a different manufacturer, they are smoother than ones I have used up to this point. One good aspect of the new set is the extensive range of color I have to work with but they are very different to apply so it will take some getting used to.  Additionally this is the first time I have used a sanded pastel paper. The surface texture is the same as 300 grit sand paper so you can add layer after layer of color, as many as 25 according to the maker of the paper. That makes working on it rather interesting as I am used to having to be more cautious of the pigments turning into a nondescript blending of color referred to as mud.  Lastly, the technique I attempted is a variation on Pointillism where the entire image is created with small spots of color. I found that my choice of a fairly small paper size did not work well with the large soft pastels which are rather hard to make small spots with in a uniform and controlled manner. I plan to make this the first of series of pastels using the same image but changing the size and type of paper.  Check back again to see "Tuesday Stroll in the Park" some time after my vacation.

"Morning Flight"

Morning Flight is the result of a morning spent at our friend's beach house, drinking coffee and watching the mist slowly burn off and give way to the sunny morning. I added the sea bird as a distraction, there were originally two, but the one that was to the left of the survivor you see, frustrated me and I made him fly away, actually he became part of the sea like all good seagulls should. I also wanted to capture the way sunlight lights up water in a swell, not so much the reflection on the surface, but the light in the water. I guess I will have to work on that as well in the future when another similar idea or image comes along.

As always I am open to your comments and suggestions.

Thanks for stopping by.