"golden"

"golden" 12"x16" pastel on Uart 500  $125

I was so inspired by a recent 3 day plein air workshop in Blue Ridge GA team taught by Karen Margulis and Marsha Savage! It rained 2 out of 3 days, but Karen and Marsha made up for it with a wealth of info and demos.  I was truly blessed for the weekend being surrounded by a talented group of artists. I was excited to get back home and try what I had learned. We are not quite in full autumn color here in GA, but the golden rod, grasses and other autumn flowering weeds are in full bloom. Unfortunately I am allergic to those weeds , but I couldn't resist going for a walk along the Chattahoochee River to scout out some ideas. Oh how I wanted to sit there and paint plein air! SNEEZE SNEEZE!!! So I headed home to my studio with a bunch of great photos and images fresh in my mind!

I was introduced to a new product for toning paper

It comes in six colors. I chose to tone my Uart 500 paper for the start of my series of autumn weed paintings. For the first painting, "sitting in the grasses", I chose the dark brown and toned the paper making it darker in the areas of darkest value.

You just take the block and rub it on the paper and blend with water and a brush. You don't need much, the pigment is rich. I did the same thing with the underpainting for the second painting, "golden" and chose sanguine.

You can see my line drawing here blocking in the big simple shapes of the painting. I tried to let the underpainting show through the pastel. There is so much you can do with these water soluble blocks, even drawing with them. I can't wait to experiment more!

"sitting in the weeds" 8"x10" on Uart 500  $60