My poor blog. It's been neglected lately. Of course my art has been neglected a lot too, but I *have* done some art work - just struggling to get it posted. But I figured I would finally make a start. We had a paint-out yesterday with the First Coast Pastel Society, at the Nature Preserve at the University of North Florida.
We were all saddened to have learned of the death of Maggie Price the day before. Maggie was a huge luminary in the pastel world, and a warm and lovely woman. I took a workshop with Maggie a few years ago and it was one of the best workshops ever. I recall one day Maggie did a demo painting of a rushing stream coursing over a bunch of boulders. She wanted us all to work on rocks, and claimed most people wound up making their rocks look like potatoes. So throughout the day she kept saying, "No potatoes! No potatoes!"
So when I found this big rock on the island I decided I had to make it my subject, and to do my best to avoid the potato look. Maggie, I hope I succeeded.
Since this is my first post in so long I decided to show sort of a progression of the growth of the painting.
Preliminary sketch and laying in some of the darks - to catch the shadows in plein air before the light shifted too much.
Filling in more shading on the objects, and the background.
More in the water and the foreground, and the objects.
Working more on the rock.
Working on the ground in the forest,
Mostly finished.
And the final painting again. Now that I've posted again I'll have to go back and start adding the pieces I've done in the last couple months - not all of them pastel!
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