pastel study

7x5 on sanded paper

A view of some trees on our berm in the late afternoon.  I was walking around looking at the water level of the creek and noticed the light on these 2 trees and thought they would make an interesting study.  I haven't painted a landscape in awhile, so I felt a little rusty.  

another figure study

6x8 pastel on canson paper

The one thing I like the most about pastels is I can leave them out and walk away and nothing will happen to them, unlike oils, watercolors and acrylics.  My reference photo is of Kris sitting on her bed looking out the window in a robe...I wanted to work on skin tones.  I left the background very loose and abstract like.   

figure study

I did this figure study using pastels yesterday afternoon...7x5 on canson paper.

pastel study

5x7 wallis sanded paper

Last night I painted this duck study from a photo I had taken at Crenshaw Park last year.  I want a couple of ducks, but DH says they are too messy, so I guess I'll just paint them.  

charcoal sketch #2

I did this charcoal sketch from a photo of Britt...she was standing outside around noon when I took the picture.  It's on an 11x8 piece of gray Canson paper...I used the wrong side, so I'm not happy with it, but I'm not going to re-sketch it.  Britt will be home this weekend, so I plan on taking more photos of her in different dresses.  I'm also, planning on trying to copy a Edgar Degas pastel painting.  I keep hearing and reading that you can learn a lot from copying a piece done by a master artist.  Degas was a french artist who died in 1917.      

charcoal sketch

I did this sketch using a 4B, 6B and white charcoal pencils with a touch of a soft white pastel.  My reference photo was taken by Britt at my parents lake house in 2007 of Kris and her friend Casey.  This is the first time I have worked with charcoals...I used a gray 14x20 piece of Canson Mi-Teintes paper to help with the mid tones...it took me about 50 minutes.  They were looking into the sun, so there's not a lot of light.  I see some things I would change, but since it's just a sketch, I'll leave it alone.  I plan on doing another charcoal sketch from a photo I took of Britt...she has on one of her long ball dresses, so it has a lot of fabric folds.