My work is now for sale

My wonderful sister Melanie has found an outlet for our work. A gallery/cafe in Poynton, Cheshire is exhibiting six of my sunflowers and eight of Melanie's still lifes. This is a very exciting time. We drank champagne last night to celebrate, and this feels like the beginning of something. It took me nearly 30 years to get to this point, and it's taken Mel about 3 weeks of intensive tutoring from me. I've taught her all I know, and it only took 3 weeks........
Melanie and I have had an absolute ball this last month, living our art every waking hour, and even dreaming about it too. You know how intense and all-consuming it can be when it's this good. Now we're taking bets on who gets the first sale.
Time to say thank you to you guys; you have been my mentors and peers these last two years. I am so honoured to have found you, and that you've stuck with me.

Sunflower #1

Soft pastels on a dark brown gound.

Oak Tree studies I, II and III

Abstract studies

Working from Rolina van Vliet's Painting Abstracts; ideas, projects and techniques.
I was excited when I found this book, and it was amazing to find myself considering the each piece as a whole from very early on, ie how the shapes are relating to each other, choosing and adjusting colours quite critically. All this was amazing, considering I didn't have a goal in sight for any of these pieces.
I don't think that any of these deserve hanging space, and yet, more so that when I was doing the still life exercises, I feel like I'm learning in great leaps about composition, rhythm, variation in scale, and colour relationships.

Life studies

Working in charcoal on A2 paper, these backlit figures suggested shades of gray, rather than line drawings, so in I plunged.

Exercise 5 - blending

The teacher is wrong. He advises painting in the pears, then adding the background. But he's wrong. Also, after I'd done some fine blending in shades of green and yellow, I decided that it was all to tame, so I livened it up with some impasto in reads and blues. Then I worked over that with the yellow again.
The background was a flat grey, so I made it purple, to zing against the green, then worked over in a chilly blue to send it all backwards again.
At some point I stopped looking at the pears and just looked at the painting to see if it was all working as a piece, and I think that's when I made leaps. I am very, very happy with this piece.

Exercise 4 - Impasto

Why did I paint a cantaloupe? Because the watermelon was too heavy for the hand basket. The texture was hard to capture, and I'm much happier with the pomegranate.

Impasto was great. I found it hard to lay on the pastel thick enough first time, due to my lack of certainty about the final placement of colours. But I enjoyed going over it all with a thicker layer, slightly adjusting the shapes as I went. I wish I'd used stronger under painting to build up a depth or red and green to work over. I will definitely use this approach on future subjects.

Exercise 3 - Linear technique

At last I get into the swing of pastel painting, then I get a tummy bug (for the third time in a couple of weeks) which puts the kibosh on getting anything done for a while. Plus we're off to the in-laws caravan for the weekend (illness permitting) so, though I may get some sketching done, I'll not be working on these exercises til next week at least.

So here's last night's offering. I didn't think there were legs on this technique but now I'm not so sure. Maybe it's a good way to play around with mixing colours before committing. I found the nectarine difficult, the apple was quite easy, and the orange was a trial but I think I conquered it.

After work yesterday I went into Newcastle and stocked up on pastel paper, hard pastels, and fixative. I also chose two boxes for pastels, as I'd cracked the Ferrero Rocher box I used to use. Actually, the unfinished wood would take well to pyrography. That's a project for another month, me thinks. Don't the pastels look amazing in this box. They cry out to be picked up and used.

Exercise 2 - colour

This was harder than I expected. but I enjoyed looking at the reflected colour in the fruit - the orange light cast onto the lime, the yellow of the lemon reflected back on the orange. I'm also surprised at how much reflected light there is underneath from the table top.
I didn't like the background he suggested of random cross-hatched marks, so I ended up using my trademark squiggle to fill in the blanks. I think it works here because the fruit are so solid.
This time I was stood at the kitchen window in late afternoon, so no messing around with bedside lams on kitchen units. But the light is fading, so the next one may be by candlelight.

Exercise 1 - underpainting

Here's the finished exercise. It was meant to be done all in hard pastels, with a view to learning how to create the tonal structure to paint over in soft pastels. But I only have a limited number of hard pastels. I feel a shopping trip to Details in Newcastle coming on.
I enjoyed working this way - it sounded similar in some ways to the tonal underpainting Mel did in acrylic glazes over grisaille.
Anyway, I didn't expect to enjoy this, I thought it'd be a chore. but I'm looking forward to getting home after work & getting my teeth into the next exercise.