Back to the Sticks

It was time to take the sticks out to play with, because I think they were getting jealous of their cousins, the Pans.  So I put the lids on the Pans and stacked them on the corner of my pastel table and moved the sticks to the front and got my fingers dusty.  It felt good.

I usually like to start a pastel painting with some kind of an under painting.  This one was started with a pastel and alcohol under painting.  The alcohol sets the pastel into the tooth of the sanded paper and leaves most of the tooth for my heavy handed application of the pastels.  I need all the tooth I can get.

This isn't the most complicated painting I have ever done, but I needed to get something done.  I seem to be at a stage where I have to make myself paint.  Is that a good thing?  Maybe.  If I wasn't doing this challenge, I think there would be a very good chance that I would have been sitting on the sidelines and not painting.  At the end of the month I would look back and wonder why I hadn't painted more often.  Doing this challenge will get me painting and that is the only way to improve.  Mileage at the easel!

This is a 5 x 7 pastel painting done on UART 400 grit paper.  Thanks to Paula Ford for the reference photo.   Hmm... those sky holes could be better.  Oh, well.  Thanks for looking.

Doug