Gold Head Branch Two

Pastels are still and always will be my first love, but they have a couple related drawbacks that make me think about other mediums from time to time.
1) They never "dry" like oil or acrylic - good in that you can always go back to them to touch up or make changes, but bad in that they must always be protected
2) Which means they have to be framed under glass ,which adds to the cost, the weight, and the pain of framing.

And I have no interest in oils which don't suit my impatient painting style - but I keep *toying* with the idea of using acrylics. The problem is that I love the idea of being able to use acrylics, but I never feel happy while I'm actually doing it, and usually not happy with results which I always feel look like kindergarten works.

But today I decided to try again using the same reference photo I did in pastel back at the end of May. While oils dry far too slowly for me the acrylics often dry far too fast, so I used some Golden Retarder in the paints for this painting, and that actually seemed rather helpful.

Though I'm still not happy with this, but not as unhappy as I sometimes am, LOL. This is done on an 8x10 gallery-wrapped canvas.