Quiet Time (and the 100@100 for Wimberley Flood Victims)

"Quiet Time"  (pastel, 13x10 inches) donated

Here's a blast from the past; one of my very first still life paintings after starting my efforts to seriously improve my artwork, back in 2002. My first step was ongoing classes with pastel artist Mary Johnson at the Coppini Academy of Fine Art in San Antonio (where I lived back then.) I'd been working with pastel since I was 11, but after college was mostly doing commissioned portraits from client photos... Great for learning how to copy stuff, but NOT the best venue for creativity or learning the nuances of composition and design and other principles of great art.

Drawn from life, this one was always one of my favorites, especially the glasses resting on the book! I have a few handfuls of these old favorite paintings that never found buyers, and have been digging them up from the depths of my messy studio, in the wake of the recent massive flooding in Wimberley Texas (just 20 minutes up the road from me!) to support a special one-day show that will be hosted by the Wimberley Valley Art League on Saturday, June 27. "100@100" will feature 100 (or more) paintings priced at $100. A few larger and special pieces will be available at a silent auction. 100% of the proceeds will go to the Barnabas Connection for Wimberley Flood Victims.

Visit the Wimberley Valley Art League site for more information on this special exhibit and how you can help! (Contact them to ask if they will be posting all artworks on a webpage or FB page! -- I'm pushing for this! ;)
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Land Study 1

"Land Study 1"  (pastel, 3.5x3.5 inches)

Marla Bagetta's one-day workshop on Sunday June 7 at IAPS, was very inspiring! It was intense but fun. She had us do several versions of the same landscape, using varied color schemes for each. Hopefully soon I'll post her demo pics on my Art Journal blog.

Here's the first of my little landscapes, from a photo I've used before, but flipped.

Here's a peek with version 2, and version 3 which ended up much different than this shot...

I did six in all, and thought I might order some little mats to go in some odd frames I have. Stay tuned this week to see the rest!

Rose Garden 2

"Rose Garden 2"  (pastel, 8x6 inches)  click here to bid

My second little paintings from the Albuquerque botanical gardens last Thursday morning. I decided I could squeeze another into the self-imposed 30 minutes I had left before dashing back to the Japanese Garden to photograph the koi...

I stayed right where I was sitting for "Rose Garden 1"; just turned my head about 5 degrees left.

Another casualty of the flower-painting battle!

Rose Garden 1

"Rose Garden 1" (pastel, 8x6 inches)  click here to bid 

Here's the first of two plein air paintings from the Abuquerque Botanical Gardens. I and two new friends Julia Patterson and Barbara Miller took a drive out there last Thursday morning. What a gorgeous place that is! Very hard to do it justice.  (And that darned sun keeps moving all the time!)
This is done on watercolor paper primed with dark blue Art Spectrum pastel primer.

I took artist's license to remove the trees behind the wall...

Patio San Felipe del Norte

"Patio San Felipe del Norte" (pastel, 12x16 inches)  click here to bid 

So here's my first plein air painting in at least 2 years (since the first plein air convention in fact) I went out Wednesday morning last week during the IAPS pastel convention, into Old Town Albuquerque, and painted my favorite courtyard. I started with a watercolor underpainting on Stonehenge paper. Here are some progress shots:

Thanks for watching! Please share!

Rhubarb (and the IAPS silent auction)

"Rhubarb"  (pastel, 10x8 inches)  donated

Whew! Just got back from the IAPS pastel convention in Albuquerque. What a week of pastel inspiration, fun and relaxation, and friendships old and new! It's going to take me some time to sort through all the pics, thoughts, and workshop paintings, while I get back to the "real world" in a hurry since I have 4 portrait commissions due in the next two weeks (pencil, not pastel, thank goodness!)

But for a quick post tonight, I thought I'd show you the painting I donated to the "Pastel Pics" silent auction, which benefits the IAPS art scholarship fund.

Rhubarb was quite popular, with 7 bids!

I'm now also the happy owner of two of the silent auction paintings:
A koi fish by Isabelle Lim:

and a bird nest by Eileen Casey: