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.

Red Flowers Down By The River...

My latest pastel painting: "Red Flowers Down By The River", 9x12" on Canson Mi-Teintes paper. Here is a are some detail below:

I'm not in love with this piece, but it is a stepping stone towards learning this wonderful pastel medium.

Inside My Sketchbook...

Some doodling of the Pansies I shared with you yesterday. Some colour studies hopefully to follow in a few days :)

Pansies

I picked up some Pansies last night while running some errands. It was $1.50 for a set of 6 small plants. Obviously they are meant to be planted outside, but as I do not have a garden in my tiny apartment, I just put them in a pot. I'm sure they won't last long this way, but I'm okay with that. I actually purchased them to practice some botanical-like drawings from real life, instead of using photo references. So, hopefully I'll be sharing some sketchbook pages full of panies soon :)