August is such a slow month sometimes and it is soooo hot! I taught a plein air class in the evening for 4 mondays . During the first two we did drawings followed by  pastel and the last evening we did oil. Since my students were more interested in watching me, I spent the last class doing a demo. I was trying to show them  how one goes about starting and developing a painting outside. it is A bit different  from working in the studio. I usually work on carton which is a kind of cardboard and use fastmatte paints . These set up fast so you can continue with regular oils after and get the piece more finished.

I  really liked the way the sky turned out but wasn't too happy with the water . I will be going back to the scene to finish up. I copied it on wood however and preferred this format better since my area of interest was the sky which was magnificent and it usually is here at Lake Higgins

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This is not yet finished and it is a lot crisper in reality so I will have to take a better picture. before I post it as finished.

I have also been creating some small pastels One of which was accepted into Pure Color an international online show. I must say I was pleased to be accepted since it was out of such a large pool of entrants. Here is my painting:

I had fun doing this one. This is the first time I did a pomegranate in pastel. Usually I use oils so it was a nice change of medium. 

Our open House is coming up In September but more about that in my next blog.

Happy Summer Everyone, Although for me it has been creeping along very slowly. its hot and one of my sons moved in with me which has been full of turmoil for both him and me. Nevertheless I have been able to accomplish some interesting project.

  A recent art restoration project was a beautiful landscape that was badly damaged. it entailed relining it as well as patching and inpainting. The artist whoever he is painted his trees in the most beautiful way. i did a small copy of the tree part of the painting to learn his technique.

He seems to have done a warm brown underpainting then painted his leaves on top leaving some of the underpainting showing. It creates the perfect value change from the darker tree against the lightness of the sky values. he also creates his greens from black and yellow adding blue here and there. Very interesting and I have been trying to incorporate this technique in the way I paint.

Here is the original from which I did the little narrow painting. Gorgeous isn't it?