Eventide, 5x7 -sold

Eventide, pastel on board by Adriana Meiss

  This small paintings was among the ones I sold at Plowshares in Dec.

  The last two weeks have been just too cold to paint in my studio, but before the cold spell set in I did a winter scene in pastel which I showed to my oil instructor and he suggested I use those same colors in an oil painting I'm working on.

  Oils? Yes! A long time ago when I started with art, oils were my favorite medium, but at the time, the trend in teaching art students was "let them find things for themselves." This approach did not produce good results with me,  as sometimes things worked but the majority did not, so I abandoned them. Now, I feel ready for the challenge of working with them once again, but with good guidance this time around. One big difference though: I find it extremely hard being patient with oil's drying time. This fact makes me appreciate pastel's immediacy even more, so I don't see myself putting my precious sticks away anytime soon.

The Red Pine, 10 x 8"

The Red Pine, pastel on board by Adriana Meiss

   This is a very simplified scene from a very busy reference photo, which had willows and bushes in the background and lots of joe pye weeds in the foreground.

   For some reason I just wanted to paint the crooked pine with the open field behind it. To give it an air of mystery I added the cloudy atmosphere and subdued colors. To me it speaks of comfortable loneliness. I'm interested in knowing how it makes you feel.

Of Crickets and Frogs, 11x14" - Sold

Of Crickets and Frogs, 11x14" pastel on board by Adriana Meiss

      Christmas came earlier for me: I'm thrilled to have this painting accepted in the 2012 International Association of Pastel Societies Web Show. See the show here.

     On another note, I don't like to make "resolutions" for the new year. The word has such a strong meaning --think of resolutions set in stone, that I know beforehand that I will disappoint myself sooner or later for not accomplishing them. I prefer to use the word "goals" because what ever those goals are going to be, it's easier to modify them into long and short-term goals. Here are some of my new goals:

• to participate in 2 more en plein air events
• to submit entries in more pastel competitions
• to teach a pastel workshop

Best wishes to you for the new year!

Aglow, 9x12"

Aglow, pastel on board by Adriana Meiss

This painting is based on the same shed of two posts ago, but his time I wanted to play with the yellows of the sunset on the trees.  The foreground bush was an afterthought as I felt something was needed there to give  more balance to the scene. I'm still debating about it's shadow...

This one will be included in my exhibit next month. My goal is to have 15 new paintings and I'm almost done.  I have 4 large ones almost finished, and one that I haven't started yet that I've been ruminating in my head for some time. In general, I'm happy to see there is cohesion in the selected work.