Pastel painting of ripe pears on a tree in a fruit orchard.
Pastel paintings 18 inches x 26 inches
Yay! My first finished pastel painting for 2012! Much as love the holiday season, I am usually very happy to get back to my normal routine and spend time in my studio.
I’ve been working on more garden paintings and trying to incorporate them into some of my other current series. When I saw these luscious pears at one of our garden sites, I just knew they would work wonderfully in my Orchard Series. This is a pretty large piece, but I felt I needed to go big to capture the feeling of space and depth I was looking for.
Pastel cityscape painting of a small street in Umbria, Italy. SOLD
Pastel painting of an extreme close up view of ripe apples on a tree.
Early Christmas Present!
I was notified last week that I had TWO pastel paintings juried into the International Association of Pastel Societies Exhibit. A real thrill and a great end to the year!
It’s an amazing exhibit filled with gorgeous artworks. You can see the full show here.
Watercolor still life painting of a single orange and shadow.
Watercolor painting 9 inches x 6 inches
A very simple piece today. This week I have been spending my studio time working on a set of large paintings of Umbria and haven’t done many small pieces.
This is another still life painting from my work shop in Italy, painted on Waterford cold press paper (my favorite!). Below is a painting of oranges that I posted a while ago, done at the same time, of the same oranges, but on Yupo plastic paper. You can see that the paper has A LOT of affect on the final outcome of painting. If you want to control the outcome, it s very important to have a vision before you start painting and choose your paper accordingly. If you don’t need total control, experiment with different substrates!
When I was in Italy, one of our instructors, Fritz Kapraun, encouraged us to paint some of the local flora of the region. He has a wonderful way with watercolor and inspired us all. There was a lovely orange tree on site and a few of us tried painting the fruit on our studio days.
I painted this watercolor painting on Yupo paper. I love the “serendipity” of this surface. You can’t really control what will happen with the paint on Yupo. It puddles and congeals in ways that you can’t imagine ahead of time. You just have to go with the flow and relinquish your ability to direct the outcome. Something that is very liberating for a control freak like me…
Pastel painting of a close-up view of ripe apples on a tree in autumn.
Pastel painting 25.5 inches x 12.5 inches $850 (Giclee prints are available)
Spent a bit of time in the studio this week to finish up a pastel painting that has been languishing on my easel for months. This is part of my Orchard Series that I started early this year. I’ve finished 4 of them so far and am really happy with the results.
As some of you may already know, I am obsessed with what I call “micro landscapes”– extreme closeup views of various scenes in nature. (See my RiverStones and TreeScape Series) I like painting recognizable subjects that are cropped so tightly, they almost become abstract in composition. I hope to add 4 or 5 more paintings to the series this year. The first two will be exhibited in an exhibit at Tvedten Fine Art beginning in late July.
Pastel still life painting of 2 red apples on a white plate
Pastel painting 5.25 inches x 7.75 inches $100
Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.
I don’t usually paint many still lifes. But every once in a while I get the urge to paint from life and I’m too much of a whimp to paint outside in the winter. I recently painted this pastel as a compositional study in ovals and circles. I also experimented with a very limited color palette…
