Garden by the Shed, 7x5" Sold

Garden by the Shed, pastel on board by Adriana Meiss

   This pastel was one of the four paintings sold at last weekend's Plowshares fair.  In fact, three of the paintings were bought by three different previous customers.  Still, doing the fair is a great opportunity for me to meet new people and to get them interested in classes and future workshops.
 
Last summer I lost a sale for not being able to accept credit card payments. This time around I was prepared for it and I'm glad I did!

Garden Path at Baltimore Woods, 12x9"

Garden Path at Baltimore Woods, pastel on board by Adriana Meiss

   This is the second painting I did during the Carsten Workshop early this month.
   I wanted the yellow grasses at the end of the path to be the focal area (highest contrast).  The hardest part was painting the cone flowers at the bottom. I wanted them to be distinctive but without much detail.Again, I used one of my own boards.

Orchard Gate, en plein air, 11x8"

 My second outdoors painting of the year, the gate to our orchard. Last year I had attempted to paint this same view only on the other side of the gate, and my aim had been the blooming peach tree behind the leafing apple ones. However, I had started by painting the old house in the background first and got so carried away that I ended up giving it so much detail. By the time I added the peach tree I couldn't pull it off. Angry at myself because this wasn't the first time it had happened, I took a brush to remove all the pastel I could and washed the board. 

For this one it was the light on the tower-like structure and the adjacent building that called my attention.  It was painted in early afternoon but went through some tweaking in the studio.

 Some good news: I have been accepted into the Finger Lakes Plein Air Competition in Canandaigua (June 8-10) so I'm very excited about it and a little bit scared too since this will be my first plein air competition. One more reason to get out there and paint!