Southwest Sky

"Southwest Sky" (pastel 14x11in)

This was my result from the Liz Haywood-Sullivan hands-on demo at the convention. I very carefully followed all the steps as closely to how she demonstrated as possible -- I think it worked!

I also found a valuable lesson about framing when I got this home. I've been framing a bunch of stuff in preparation for the Rockport Art Fest this weekend. I was searching through my frames for something to put on my two larger landscapes from the foothills, and came across an old still life from '02 in a strange whitewashed frame that (I thought for years) could only look good on that still life (it had onions.) Well, I took the old painting out to see how it looked on the other landscapes -- it didn't work on those either. But then I tried it on this one  -- wow!

Something about the white and gray cloud shapes really worked with those weird gray knots in the wood.  This was a frame I couldn't seem to recycle onto any of my paintings lately, because my palette tends toward warm ivories and golden tones and not very many cool whites and grays. This painting, that I might not have tried outside of that demo, seemed like it was made for this frame!
Just goes to show the benefit of trying new subjects and colors!