At Greenland Pond

At Greenland Pond
9x12
Pastel

Finished! I'm dedicating this one to my two boys who live far away now from this pond in our neighborhood where they spent so many days catching turtles, jumping off the raft ( Ma, watch me! No, watch ME!) and just being little boys.

Dressage

Dressage
9x12
pastel

Not quite finished with the background and a few other things here, but I am finding that I really love painting horses. I find photographing the painting and looking at it online helps me see it in a new way so I can decide on changes or additional work I may want to do on it.
My first horse painting was The Final Turn, below,which won an award at a gallery show.

Horses have such majesty, grace and power, no wonder I love to paint them!

Work in Progress

This is a scene from a photo I took last weekend at Greenland Pond. The colors with the afternoon sun on them were just magnificent! This is how it looks after about 2 hours of work. I think I have about another 2 hours to go. I still have to add some more darks and highlights, tone down a few places and bring up others. I'll be adding some fallen leaves to the water and I've just started the tree trunk. So check back at the end of the week to see the finished painting.

At Greenland Pond
9x12
pastel
work in progress

Two Works in Progress

I haven't posted any paintings in a while so here are two that aren't quite done, works in progress.....

This first one is 9x15 on velour paper. This paper feels kind of like suede. I've only used it once before on "The Reader" but I am coming to love it! It is a totally different experience than the other surfaces I use. You have to layer the color, you can't really mix them together very well because of the way the surface holds the pigment. But I love the softness that results. And there is less pastel dust, which is always a good thing.

Leaf in a puddle

Snowbird

I just started this one. I used a photo that my sister took. This is also on the velour paper.

I don't know when I'll get back to it, but I like the way it's coming along. If you enlarge the photo, you can see the texture of the surface.

Welcome to Autumn

Since Fall is upon us, I decided to put some of that Beautiful color into my work. I created this today. It only took a few hours and after all the detail of Brandon's Portrait and the hours (days) that went with it, it was nice to just kind of let go, be more expressive and get into the color!
Seeing it in the photo, I think I'll darken it up a bit here and there....then it will be done.

Around the Bog

12x16

pastel