Dried Sunflowers

Dried Sunflowers I, 6.5 x 6.5"

Dried Sunflowers II, 6.5 x 6.5"

  Well, I have been having so much fun rediscovering oils that I haven't had the time to finish the last pastel done en plein air. So this is what I consider a cheating post since these pastels were painted last year.

   I had bought the flowers with the intention of creating a large painting, but as often happens, other things got in the way. The poor things were languishing in the studio making me feel bad for having wasted money on them so, in the spur of the moment, they were painted one on top of the other, on  a leftover piece of Pastelmat mounted on foamcore.  I love the looseness in the second one and I wonder if that was the result of not taking too seriously what I was doing.

Small Floral Studies

I'm taking a 3-Saturday floral workshop with Mary Padgett, a local artists who paints gorgeous flowers. While I have taken two other workshops with her before, this time around I wanted to concentrate on mark making and color.

One of the things we covered in the first class was the importance of the paper color to better enhance the subject. To that end we prepared several sheets of watercolor paper using Golden's Acrylic Ground for Pastels, mixed with acrylics or Micaceous Iron Oxide (this one produces a shiny, dark gray surface with great tooth). While the prepared paper was drying, I had time for two small studies, both done on Uart paper. The first one (top), was well thought, and I purposely didn't do any blending with my fingers. The second one (lilies) was more for the purpose of handling complementary colors, and it was done in a hurry.


Today, I painted two more, using two of the papers I prepared: orange for the sunflower, and yellow-orange for the daisies. Each was done in about half an hour. More time than that and I would have started blending. For next class, we were promised some spring flowers...