Happy Fall!

I suppose the easiest way to describe how pastels have helped me progress is that I see the color and value more clearly when working from a photograph.  There's still some guess work involved, but certainly more than one right answer. Color harmonies used to drive me crazy.  The beautiful thing about pastels is that a color will only look a certain hue until you place a different color next to it.  For me the most gratifying moment when painting is when the color all of sudden pops. That happened in the painting above as soon as I put in those rusty orange colors and the light cream color.