Charlie

"Charlie"  (pastel, 12x12 inches)  $400 unframed for a limited time

Well, February is almost over and I've had a busy, kind of stressful month.

"Stressful!?" you say?

Yes. Mainly from not having enough time to paint and post. I haven't even sent out my February E-news, which won't happen now; I'll have to skip it and just do March. Charlie here I've been saving for a rainy day when I might have time to post, if not to paint.

I have to admit I did have a profitable 2 1/2 weeks at the San Antonio Rodeo sketching quick portraits... for the 19th year (Oh my goodness I don't like adding that up - I feel old!) But now that's done and I can get back to what has become my ordinary life of ferrying my kids around to school activities, email, karate class, and painting when I have a spare couple of hours. And this weekend I have nothing on the schedule, which means... Studio-Time!! Yay!

(Either that or cleaning out the garage, which has become quite a mess since unloading all the Rodeo booth stuff...
Eh,...
No, the studio is calling!)

Meanwhile: here are progress shots of Charlie!

(Charlie is available unframed for a limited time. Framed, he will sell for $550 at the Bayou City Art Fest in Houston at the end of March.)

The primer underpainting, with the first applications of dark pastel.

 My primers are Golden (brand) Fine Pumice Gel with Golden Fluid Acrylic Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold added at about a 2/1 ratio. This is 2 to 3 layers of that gold primer, which gets darker on each application because it's slightly transparent. Followed with a layer of Art Spectrum (brand) Pastel Primer in the Terra Cotta color. This photo (above) shows also my initial layers of warm dark pastels, Girault #376, and a Terry Ludwig dark red.

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