Starting Again...

...not starting over.  Because that would imply that no progress was made, and that's not true.  Each hiatus from painting brings a change in my work, I think for the better.  This time the hiatus was due to the birth of my son. Pregnancy does funny things to your artistic soul. I literally could not even think about art for months, and now all of a sudden I am bursting with ideas and want to paint everything.  In the past two weeks I've finished 4 pastels, and have sketches and references photos ready for new ones.  But first and foremost, I am recommiting to blogging because it holds me accountable to painting.  I need to paint; it makes me feel whole unlike anything else.  And hopefully some of you out there can help me clear out some paintings and buy them from my etsy store (also soon to be revamped). 

I have been working with pastels right now after finishing up a few watercolors, mainly because I ran out of watercolor paper.  But I have fallen in love all over again.  I love the immediacy of pastels and the richness of the color.  And, I can finish a pastel in half the time of a watercolor.  Let's face it, if I paint for 4 hours a week, then that was a great effort with a toddler and a new baby. My focus with my pastel paintings right now lies in a few key areas, and I will explore each of these in greater detail in furture blog posts:
- Color harmony/simplified palette
- Achieving the correct value placement (lights and darks in the right place) with less layers
- A more painterly approach with less detail and a more impressionistic style. 

I have been studying the work of some of my favorite artists online.  You may have seen me pinning the works of Karen Margulis and Margaret Dyer on pinterest to name a few.  I look at these paintings over and over again.  Their work speaks to me.  Or rather, "whispers", in the words of Karen Margulis (she has a great art blog by the way).  There are different things I love about each painting and my goal is to take these nuggets to build my own unique style.  I think back to my work from 5 years ago, and although I am not always happy with what I paint today, I see a big change.  So like I said, I'm starting again.  We'll see what the next "painting season" brings.  In the mean time here is one of my most recent pastels.  This is the fish pond on my grandfathers farm.

"The Fish Pond" Original pastel by Melissa Saulsbury