My Creative Space

The first step after getting all my pastels last week was to *gulp* snap off ~1/3rd of the pastel, and organize them a little. Working with the complete large sticks is not the most practical thing. It's easier to handle smaller pieces, and when they're smaller you can use the sides to blocks in large areas and lightly shade.

Sort of looks nice still - a rainbow of pastels! They aren't "perfectly" placed, but the more I work with them the better organized by hue / saturation they will be. Next, was to paint some sort of picture with them!! I choose to do one of the challenges from wetcanvas.com using a supplied photo from a member there.

I probably should have stopped working the petals at
this point, and just added the freckles and other details.
But...I didn't....

And then it's done....

I do think this piece is a little overworked...but it is my first piece with the mount visions, and working with softer pastels is so different than working with those super hard NuPastels. It's looks like a flower, so in the end = winner, hehe.

Cuddling With Oreo

Oreo is usually not one to cuddle. He's a "stand-alone" sort of creature.

...but sometimes I manage to catch him at a weak moment :)

Inside My Sketchbooks

Just a small peek inside my sketchbooks lately:

New Pastels!!

My new pastel sets came in the mail!! Well, actually they came Friday, but I had to wait over the weekend to pick them up.

Mount Vision Workshop Set

Mount Vision Workshop Landscape supplement (bottom) and
Tropical set (top)

I love, love the look of these pastels, and going to use them right after this! :D

New Watercolour Paintings in The Shop

I haven't been online too much the past week and some. I worked the Victoria Day long weekend, and then most of the rest of the week - and I think I was just tired out from that weekend and never caught up. But even though I wasn't online, I was still working away. I'm half-way through three commissions that I'm working on, and I created the three paintings below:

Blackbirds - Original 9x12" Watercolour Painting

Lavender - Original 9x12" Watercolour Painting

Send Me The Moon - Original 12x9" Watercolour Painting

The last one would have to be my favourite out of the bunch. I really loved how that moon turned out for me!

Bird of Paradise Pastel Painting

"Bird of Paradise" - 8x10" on prepared archival board.

 I finished my Bird of Paradise pastel painting on Sunday. This piece made me realise that I've still lots to learn about pastels, but also - having more pastels, of varying hardness / softness really helps pull things together to achieve what you're aiming for. 

Pastels go through so many "ugly-stages" that it's often hard to not give up. That's what sort of happened with this piece, it was at a very ugly stage and I just set it aside for awhile. I picked it up again, and added more "ugly stages" and then eventually turned all that around into a completed piece. I could understand why some people might get discouraged with pastels...you have to add many layers to get a completed piece. 

I always love the look of it when it's clipped onto my easel, with all the pastels at the bottom. 

I've started working with the pastels on my easel as the 'dusty bits' just fall down onto a piece of newsprint that I can easily clean up - and not all over the place like when I am working flat.

Guess what came in the mail...

That's right! My 2013 sketchbook project:

...and I've already started on one of the pages...

Visit home

I went home to visit my parents last week for a couple days - while there I got to go fishing, and I caught something - a Pike! Please note, that every time I've gone fishing for the past 2-3 years I have caught nothing, nil, zip! So, I got pretty excited over it.

We just throw them back, so it was one lucky fish. 

The rest of my time at my parents was spending playing farmer (my parents cash crop), getting my car all done-up (Winter tires off-summer tires on, and front suspension fixed), reading and just getting some nice country air. I brought Oreo up with me, and he did pretty good - he is definitely not a fan of travel though and he made that quite clear.

Pastel Pansy's

I 'doodled' this Pastel of the pansy's I shared with you a little while back. I know I said I was going to paint them in watercolour, but I got a little sampler of pastels in the mail, and wanted to play with them - and those flowers were right there!

On my easel, I have found working upright contains the dust from
the pastels a little better.

Here are some close-ups of the painting, I love how to can see the layers and texture of the pastels. I think a lot of people think that you do not get very much texture, but it's there!

Here is one small box of the 'sampler' I made, just to give you an example of how wonderful these little gems look, and how different they all look.

 I essentially went to DickBlick.com and purchased one or two of the brands that I have heard good things about. This way, I could find which brand really spoke to me. I would say my favourites were: Mount Vision, Unison, Richeson and Schimincke. I really liked Diane Townsend's pastels too, they were interesting to work with. I may have ordered some more, but you'll have to wait to see which ones I choose. ;)

I am loving these pastels, and the more of them I get the more I'll be able to do with them!

Crystal Clear...

I live near a bay...it's just down the block. And it has such clear, beautiful water. 

On a clear day, the water is a bright shade of blue. I go past it every morning on my way to work, and sometimes it has this eerie mist coming from it.

Work in progress...

Here's a Pastel Painting that I have in the process right now. It's on board that I prepared with Golden Acrylic Ground. I'm having a hard time adjusting to this base, which is almost like sandpaper but the results are reasonable. I've been working on this with a 24 set of NuPastels; so it is a very limited palette:

Because this surface is so gritty, it's taking a lot layers of pastels to 'cover' it properly...so things look a lot worse before they start looking better.

The hardest part is yet to come as well - the blossom....we'll just have to see how that goes :)

Guess who...

Oreo doesn't quite like vaccum cleaners, and tends to hide in the most convient place. This time it was just under my duvet on my bed. I only noticed him after cleaning, and saw the bump. I gave it a little poke and got a grogy, 'prr-meow' noise from it....

Well, I guess he had ended up staying there and falling asleep...what a little suck hehe

Full Moon

It was a huge full moon this weekend. I took this picture from my phone, so it's a little grainy. Hopefully you were lucky enough to go outside and see this gorgeous moon.