Sunday, April 22, 2012

Spring Garden (my DPW Challenge - 1st post!)

"Spring Garden"  (pastel, 6.5 x 6.5 inches)  click here to bid

This is my first painting from my first Daily Paintworks Challenge that I authored myself! (Click here to see the challenge.) I chose a photo of a driveway of a historical house in New Braunfels that is always in perfect beautiful condition of landscape and mood (complete with a horse-drawn buggy and mannequins in the front yard - not seen in the photo; that would have REALLY been an overload!) The photo is beautiful, but has TONS of information, so I decided to call this the "Cropping Challenge" since what I typically do to find a good painting composition is to hone in on a simpler subject and crop out the rest.
This painting is a view of  the plants that border the side porch of the house, and a bit of the garage in the background.

It's done on Arches watercolor paper with a watercolor underpainting, and pastel on top. I've not used this particular surface before, but wanted to try something different, since this was also a different subject matter than my usual. I enjoyed the process and it was fun to see how the texture of this paper affected the result. I like the impressionist look.


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