Pastel portrait painting of a young woman reading.

Pastel painting   9 inches x 12 inches

Loosen up! I wanted to do a quick figure painting, a sketch really, playing around with color and expressive strokes. Every once in a while it helps to play with your medium, in this case pastel, and get away from your usual approach. I liked the diagonal composition and using complimentary colors, red and green, which make the piece really zing! I’m not sure that my daughter Manda would recognize herself, but I wasn’t really looking to create and exact pastel portrait. Just having fun!

I’m currently working on a pastel portrait of mother and child for one of my art clients. This one will be a much tighter rendition. I’ll post it soon…

This artwork was created with:
Paper: Leaf Green Dark Art Spectrum Pastel Paper
Medium: Rembrandt Pastels and Sennelier Pastels

Pastel portrait painting of a young girl reading.

Pastel painting 11 inches x 17 inches

We’ve been painting alot of children and teenagers in our figure drawing sessions this summer. The kids are out of school and its a perfect time to capture them in pastel portraits.  This young lady is actually a daughter of one of our painters. She sat quietly and read for over 2 hours and barely moved! It was interesting to try and capture her likeness without seeing her eyes. Usually eyes are such a large (and difficult!) part of capturing someone’s likeness…

Pastel portrail of a woman looking down while reading.

Pastel painting 10 inches x 14 inches

Unfortunately, we had another model who didn’t show for our figure drawing session last week…Fortunately, one of our artists offered to sit for the group! Nancy was so kind to give up her own drawing time for the good of the rest of the painters. We really owe her! I had to leave early to give a client her commissioned portrait, so I wasn’t able to do a very finished pastel portrait of her. But I think I was beginning to catch her likeness…

I was just recently notified that I had two works accepted into the Pastel Society of North Florida National Juried Exhibition. We travel to Florida in winter and I love to paint the Everglades en plein air. Below are the pastel paintings that will appear in the show at Northwest Florida State College from October 22-December 2, 2010.

Pastel portrait of a woman reading

Pastel painting 8.5 inches x 11 inches   $300

Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.

One rainy day down south we were trapped inside, so I did this pastel portrait of my sister. She made the perfect model because she was so engrossed in her book that she hardly moved an inch.

I really like doing pastel paintings on Kitty Wallis paper. It is a very rough sanded paper and eats up a lot of your precious pastels, but it is a wonderful surface to create interesting marks on. I think I work with a bit more expression on this paper.

We are having a portrait show soon and I will post that information in a few days.

Watercolor painting of a man reading a newspaper in a lounge chair by the pool.

Watercolor painting 5.5 inches x 5.5 inches       $80

Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.

I captured this man at the pool, early in the morning, as he reviewed sporting events in the newspaper. He was a bit heavier than my usual models but made an interesting watercolor figure painting just the same!

Watercolor painting of a young woman in a bathing suit engrossed in a book.

Watercolor painting 4.5 inches x 7 inches       $80

Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.

Nothing better than a good book at the beach! This woman was completely engrossed in her novel and never noticed me painting her. And she barely moved an inch the whole time. A perfect model for a  watercolor figure painting on a sunny lazy day.