Jennnifer

Today's model was the grandaughter of one of the artists. This small portrait was drawn with a sepia pastel pencil on bristol with a payne's grey wash. The color of the paper did not scan very well - it's supposed to be a light grey/blue color.

Princeton portrait

We had a wonderful model today! The pastel was very slow going and it was looking very iffy until the last half hour. Afterwards, a group of us had lunch at a fellow artist's house and then drove to Peterborough, NH to the Sharon Arts Center. There's a members' show on exhibit there. I picked up an application and am thinking of applying for juried membership.

Princeton portrait group

This morning I joined a portrait drawing group that meets in Princeton once a week. Everyone was so friendly and it was such good practice that I am looking forward to going back. It's been a long time since I've worked life sized and I really struggled for the first hour or so. I finally reverted back to my habit of working in miniature. This willow charcoal sketch is only about 4" high. The paper is the back of a BOKX 109 restaurant menu.

William

The original has a bit more color than what shows here, and is pastel on gray-green La Carte paper. Will is my nephew. I worked from a photo that I took during Easter brunch at my in-law's. Due to lack of space, Will was stuck at the kids' table.

JazzFest

The leader of the Brazilan Drum Parade. I was photographing various scenes at the Boston JazzFest a few years ago when I spotted this fellow with a great smile and hat, so I followed him around for awhile with my camera. The pastel painting is on a full sheet of watercolor paper and was purchased by a friend who was at the event with me. Yes, my friend has a brick wall in his condo- it's very cool.

pastel portrait

I thought I'd post a few photos showing the progression of my newest pastel. It's on a bright white Rives paper which I had never worked on before. It is a very soft paper; pleasant to work on but just a little too fuzzy. I had to periodically spray fixative between layers of pastel, and used mostly Sennelier and Great American.

I just purchased some new boards for oil paintings so hopefully I'll have some to post this weekend. It certainly is drab outside so I am not sure what I'll end up painting.