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                                                                   Winters Walk                                                                         12"x16"                                                                          Pastel Still not feeling at full throttle, especially after I shared "the crud" with my hubby and we have both been sleep deprived.  This is a piece of inspiration from Viacheslav, one of my favorite photographers at PMP.  He is just genius in his shots and I fell in love with the lights in this composition.  It did give me some thought time though in trying to figure out how to render the leafless trees in the background.  I got some suggestions from the friendly folks at How To Pastel, no one came up with too many others ways to do it than what I had, so then gave it a go. I started with  a piece of apricot MiTeintes paper, smooth side.  Then did the sky color layer and went at it with color pencils (it was the only way I thou

Baby, Baby 15.5"x12" Pastel Well I should know myself well enough by now that in the winter when I want to have a big pity party - watch out!!!  Really sick isn't far behind and this has been no exception.  I have felt it coming on for a couple of weeks and it finally got me, probably second only second time since I retired.  Of course, being in the doctors office - there are sick people there you know - didn't really help either.  Anyway, good news is I think I am on the mend and can get excited about doing my daily sketching again. This is a photo I pulled from PMP quite a while ago, it is from Glennis Watson, a wonderful Scottish artist.   I knew I wanted to do it, just hadn't gotten around to it.  When I felt up to painting a little, I fell in love again with these eyes.  So decided it was time to try the pastel mat as the surface again.  I think I really am going to enjoy it, the feel between velour and sand paper.  I also wanted to see if I coul

                                                                       Winter's Day                                                                            12"x16"                                                                              Pastel Guess I am in a funk.  This picture when I saw it yesterday totally epitomized my mood.  We aren't getting hammered, like some of the country, but winter is definitely back.  All the stuff that thought Spring was here is now getting killed, since it was so far developed, actual leaves on trees, not sure what is going to happen with the cycle. I liked this shot from Ron Ford, it is a really overcast gray day.  I actually added a lot more color into this piece than the photo.  Thought it was a perfect piece to create depth with the various tree lines.  I am just going to keep my head down and try to crank out some of these landscapes, hoping that I will get the idea and start to be comfortable with them. This is on

Special Delivery Acrylic 10"x8" I seldom do any studies of a subject before I actually paint it.  That according to the guys that do it right shouldn't be the case.  The more you do a subject the more comfortable and familiar you are with it.   I originally did this cat in the January 30 day challenge, see below, when I was concentrating on doing fur.  I knew I wanted to do him in this pose, just has taken me a while to get around to it.  I found a picture reference of the mailbox, got it sized to the cat and then kind of just made it be my own colors.  I think this is a decent composition with the diagonal of the box door leading to the cat and the flag acting as the eye stopper.  This is done on mat board, unfortunately Hobby Lobby no longer sells their mat cutouts, so pretty some I am going to have to buy full mat board sheets and then try to cut it myself.  Oh, another adventure!! I do think that all the fur work I did in the challenge has helped me f

DID YOU REMEMBER TO JUMP AHEAD ON  YOUR CLOCK!! Well I have been doing a bit of a recapping on my exploits in social media.  I have been working it a bit at a time, not killing myself and think it is interesting to see what has happened.  While some of these numbers are small, considering I was at 0 the beginning of February .... well you see where I am going. Pinterest: - I have 10 followers, and most of them are not people who are primarily interested in art and many of them I have followed back because they had boards I was interested in:  gardening, interior design, rusted autos, quotes, etc.  I have no idea really how they found me other than I have begun following some people with 1,600 followers, so?????? - For February I had 857 viewers to my boards, mostly US and Canadians.  I average 13 daily viewers, and they look at an average of 30 pins daily. - 78% are female and 21% males, for Pinterest I think that is to be expected - My art page boards now make up 56% of th

I don't know if entangle is still a thing, but it sure helps me when I have to go to the doctor.  I am weak, I am silly, but I get scared internally - I have white coat syndrome!!  My blood pressure just goes through the roof.  I found that besides having lots of wait time it calms me down to doodle.  Now I haven't really created a good habit of sketching lots of things from life - that's why Joan, you inspire me.  So small baby steps. One things about the entangle thing is that I never know where it is going to take me.  I was just really practicing my mark making.  Now that I take a harder look I see that I got plenty of texture into this drawing and I am going to deem it a success. You can check out  https://www.facebook.com/Nelvias-Fine-Arts-1394520027483120/  to see the other drawings I did while in the waiting room.  My doctor is primarily a pediatrician (well I am pretty child like) and had a Mother Goose book in there for entertainment.  As I sat in the chair it

                                                              Cumbrian Hills                                                                    18"x12"                                                                     Pastel Back trying another landscape.  I saw Sandie Bell put this on PMP last week and knew that I just had to give it a try.  All those wonderful and colorful greens - colors I don't usually have much cause to use.  Plus the majesty of this place, this is part of her lake district series. This is painted on a bright pinky-purple Artagain, yes, I said pink.  It was the closest thing I had to red to help make the greens pop and you can see it shining through in several places, especially in the lighter clouds.    The majority of this painting is done with pan pastels and the final touches are with traditional sticks and a dark green colored pencil to help define the trees a bit more. If this keeps up I might actually start to like landscapes.  But se

First I am thankful to my parents and every teacher I had that encouraged me to learn and love to read.  Sometimes you read about something and you just have to try it. Here is my first experimental result of what Kathy Paulus, an wonderful artist at PMP, does with a combination of color pencil and pan pastels on Dura-Lar paper.  I have tried colored pencil on this polyester sheet and you can color both front and back, which is good as it doesn't hold many layers.  But she combines pan pastels and color pencils - so had to try it.  One thing about the dura-lar is because it is opaquely transparent you can put colored mat/paper behind it and it will change the way the coloring is.  Here I put it on a piece of orange construction paper.  I was surprised at how well the paper took the pastel and held onto it.  Well now, that opens up all kinds of things to the imagination. Thanks much for stopping by.

                                                                   Red Eyed Devil                                                                            8"x12"                                                                             Pastel Just finished this piece, its odd size is due to being a half sheet of Pastel Premier paper.  It is supposed to be similar to Wallis paper, made by same company and having similar specs.  I had always heard about how great Wallis paper was, no longer available, and wanted to give it a try.  Costs a pretty penny though.  I think I am going to like my other experiment, pastelmat, much better. Anyway this is my second attempt and I find this a very unusual hard sanded surface. It absolutely hates pan pastels and their applicators.  So I had to go back to traditional sticks.  But I found that the surface really doesn't want to accept it all that well either as you can see in the background and foreground limb.  Must be somethi

We are looking at the time changing soon and for me that means it's time to wash the carpets.  So I did my upstairs yesterday and today, well let's just say I am delighted to be back in the art room just hanging.  I was going to attack the garage today, but ... there's going to be another tomorrow for that I think. I had some fun with this flower.  I don't usually do flowers, although I have several books on botanical art because I wish I could do flowers.  I also don't do a lot with watercolor.  So today was the challenge to do both.  I also added in some watercolor pencils too for some of the details.   And, voila, with the power of canva.com I can transform it into my quote of the day.   Finally found a nice site that there are quotes from famous artists, so think I will utilize them for a while.  Thanks much for stopping by to take a look.