Around the world, a triple play!

I'm going to go ahead and warn you now that this is a long post.  One of the best things about pastels is that you can achieve a decent painting in about half the time of watercolors.  So basically, 1 Saturday afternoon= 1 finished painting! Which is perfect for time challenged individuals like myself.  And that is why I am posting so many paintings now. A brief commentary on each follows.

This is a painting from our trip to Vienna circa 2007.  It's rare that I will paint something for a specific room, but I had this empty wall in my dining room glaring at me. And since I'd found a big, beautiful frame for only $15 at the flea market, I felt I owed it a great painting.  This is the largest painting I've done to date in pastels- about 22x28, and I have to say it was liberating (although I'm STILL cleaning up pastel dust in my studio from it).  One last note- I ended up lightening the foliage in the trees with a dusty rose shade so they weren't so dark, but forgot to take another picture before it was behind glass :-( 

This one is a little miniature 9x12 from class last week.  I've had the travel bug lately since I've been sitting home while my husband globetrots for work.  Voila- I've transported myself to San Francisco after only 3 hours on this painting.  I chose the photograph, converted it to black and white on my computer, then chose the colors that I felt like using (purple!), testing out Terry's advice that "It doesn't matter the color, only the value".  And that is why my trees are fuschia and cobalt.  I rarely say things like this, but, I LOVE this painting.  I'm tempted to do another much larger version.  Maybe...

 And just like that I left San Francisco and arrive at a garden in Tokyo.  This subject was a spur of the moment decision, a random "I don't know what to paint" moment from art class when I just randomly picked up this photo with zero planning and just jumped in.  There's no underpainting, crappy paper, and zero creativity with the colors.  But it makes me smile anyway.  It could still use a little work on the the center to create more depth.  Until it's framed, it's not finished! Till next time....