Bulldog Cliffs

This is a piece I did plein air out in Bulldog Canyon in the Tonto National Forest 2 weeks ago. It just needed some finishing touches in the studio which I did this morning. Bulldog is one of my favorite places to paint. It is very much still as nature intended. You need a pass to access the area which only has a couple of 4-wheel drive roads through it. The entrances have gates with padlock codes which are given to you 6 months at a time. There is a herd of mustangs that travel this area that we have seen twice. This canyon borders the Salt River which attracts wild life. Hope you enjoy this piece as much as I did doing it.

Sunflowers

Finally finished! This was a tough piece for me. The sunflowers themselves were a gift from good friends as part of a larger bouquet of flowers. The sunflowers were so eyecatching I just knew I had to paint them. I isolated the sunflowers and the deep purple flowers that so wonderfully accented the sunflowers into a vase to take pictures. I was happy with the resulting photo and even happier with the watercolor underpainting as I shared with you in an earlier blog entry. I was actually worried about ruining such a great foundation for a pastel painting. Maybe it was that fear that set me up mentally. I like the finished piece....but it was a painful process. I painted and left it for days...painted again with new ideas and left it for days....this continued more than a few times. Some pieces just flow from the pastels with no effort.....and other pieces fight you all along the way! As long as I am happy in the end I guess I can't complain too much about those that are a struggle. I hope you like the results!!

Small Works Continued

Surprisingly I find myself having a lot of fun with the small works approach. I was so pleased with the "Artichoke" piece that I decided to try another vegetable that also uses purples and greens....an eggplant (besides....I love eggplant). I used the remaining half of the UArt 500 grit paper sample I received at the IAPS Convention in May which is 5" x 7". I went to the Wet Canvas Reference Photo section and found a photo of eggplants that met my needs. Small works are so much fun because they are not long term projects. I completed "Eggplant" in about 3 hours with a little more tweaking the next morning after "sleeping on it". I have some samples of UArt paper of different grits.......I may just have to try some more vegetables!!!