Straight Up

 

"Straight Up"  (pastel, 5x7 inches)  click here to bid or buy

Here's one of the two paintings I did from my hotel room window, after wimping out on the cold Saturday afternoon at the Plein Air convention. I took tons of beautiful photos, and really was dying to paint. I'm just too much of a 'studio' painter to uncover my hands and stand in one spot outside when it's less than, say, 65 degrees!

Here was one view from our hotel room (the view changed very rapidly on Saturday!)

...and here was the painting I attempted to create from the awe-inspiring view:

"Weathered Range" (pastel, 4x6 inches)

I had to settle for a general impression of the range, and the feeling of temperamental cloud patterns, as various mountains appeared and disappeared with the clouds and rain. It was also a learning experience to realize how very high-key such a distant landscape really is when viewed with the eye. The photo shows it much darker than it really was. Still, I had a very hard time with the red of the rock; that was quite subtle and difficult. I was glad I hadn't tried this outdoors!
When I finally tired of keeping up with this view, I rolled my eyes in frustration and caught sight of the breaking clouds above. I instantly set to work on "Straight Up", which was much less trouble, as clouds still look like clouds even when they change position. This little piece of sky soothed my need for some sort of creative success on that day!

Day 31 - West Texas #5

"West Texas #5" (pastel, 5x7 inches)

Day 31 of my 31-in-31 in January 2020! YAY, I did it!!

And I did manage to find one last old board that already had a brushed-off old painting on it. This was a 5x7 Ampersand Pastelbord, and I brought up the values with some Art Spectrum off-white pigment ink, which was amazingly opaque. Fun to work with and giving me all kinds of ideas!

 These two colors in the pots above are two of the combos of toned pumice primers that I've been working with. The gold color is a mix of some of the Art Spectrum pigmented ink yellows and gold ochre mixed into the Art Spectrum clear multimedia & pastel primer (which contains pumice.)
The blue is some Golden brand fluid acrylic ultramarine mixed with the Golden brand fine pumice gel.
I also used a bit of Art Spectrum's terra cotta multimedia & pastel primer, thinned down in some of their clear primer. (Yes... the three primaries, all you need! :)

Then, for the pastel...

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Cloud 7

"Cloud 7" (pastel, 4x7 inches)  click here to bid or buy

This is the 7th small cloud painting I've done, most of the others were very long ago. There special thing about this one is that it's the same view as one I painted 10 years ago in the Maggie Price workshop at IAPS. This one I painted last week before the IAPS convention, when I was invited to go out and paint with my new friends Laura Pollack, Lyn Asselta and Maria Marino. It was amazing to be able to paint out with such talented landscape artists!

Lyn Asselta and Laura Pollack getting started

It was Tuesday morning and we went to the Elena Gallegos park in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. Below is the painting I did of this same scene in 2007:

"Atmosphere" (2007, pastel, 4x6) sold

Straight Up - from the plein air convention

"Straight Up"  (pastel, 5x7 inches)  click here to bid

Here's one of the two paintings I did from my hotel room window, after wimping out on the cold Saturday afternoon at the Plein Air convention last month. I took tons of beautiful photos, and really was dying to paint. I'm just too much of a 'studio' painter to uncover my hands and stand in one spot outside when it's less than, say, 65 degrees!

Here was one view from our hotel room (the view changed very rapidly on Saturday!)

...and here was the painting I attempted to create from the awe-inspiring view:

"Weathered Range" (pastel, 4x6 inches)

I had to settle for a general impression of the range, and the feeling of temperamental cloud patterns, as various mountains appeared and disappeared with the clouds and rain. It was also a learning experience to realize how very high-key such a distant landscape really is when viewed with the eye. The photo shows it much darker than it really was. Still, I had a very hard time with the red of the rock; that was quite subtle and difficult. I was glad I hadn't tried this outdoors!
When I finally tired of keeping up with this view, I rolled my eyes in frustration and caught sight of the breaking clouds above. I instantly set to work on "Straight Up", which was much less trouble, as clouds still look like clouds even when they change position. This little piece of sky soothed my need for some sort of creative success on that day!

Red Rock - from the Plein Air convention paint-out

"Red Rock"  (pastel, 8x10 inches)  click here to bid

I've finally had time to sort through my photos from the First Annual Plein Air Convention last month. Here's the painting I did out at Bonnie Springs Ranch, NV, on the Sunday morning outing. I tried to catch the cool, blocky shadow patterns on the mountain in the morning. Just an hour later they were almost gone!

 Here I am, painting!

The Saturday trip was icy cold and windy. Tremendous views, but no painting for me - I caught lots of great photos but wasn't brave enough to break out the easel... unlike so many of the die-hard professional plein air painters, many of them were there to help instruct and demonstrate for the rest of us!
Here are just a few of the great painters out there on Saturday:

Bryan Mark Taylor

Jean LeGassick

Matt Smith

Michael Godfrey

 Below are some of the inspiring views on Saturday. See the clouds coming over the mountains? Those were blowing at 20 mph and hitting us as freezing mist! Brrr!

Some of the die-hards still painting as many of us wimps were catching the first bus back to the hotel!

Sandia Mountain Vista

"Sandia Mountain Vista" (pastel, 12x18in)  click here to bid

This was my first painting the second day of Margaret Evan's workshop. The light was so fantastic in the morning that I didn't want to wait until after her demo, so I set up in a hurry and got going on these mountains, listening and taking peeks at her demo now and then, and working through on this one before the light changed too much.

I'm really happy with the mountains, and I'm really happy with the scrub-land, but I sort of feel like they belong in separate paintings because of the difference in texture. Although this was pretty close to how I saw it all.

"Mountain Tour" and Margaret Evans workshop

"Mountain Tour" (pastel, 8x10in)

This was my first plein aire painting in the Margaret Evans workshop that followed the IAPS Convention earlier this month. It's probably also my second-favorite, after "From the Hillside," my last one from that workshop!
I included the directional sign, inspired by a painting I bought from a friend and amazing pastelist, Jeri Salter.

Since I'm at home on my trusty PC today and have the time, I thought I'd include some pics form Margaret's workshop. Here are some shots of her Monday morning demo.

 Here's where she left us to go start our own paintings. She worked a bit more on this Tuesday, but I didn't get a shot of it done.

The views were absolutely amazing - here's a shot of my view for "Mountain Tour"