"play of light"

"play of light" 14"x14" pastel on home prepared board

I have been trying to paint and draw everyday. My problem with this is having enough material to work from. I'm a;ways on the look out for images to paint from. Sometimes there is nothing that seems to inspire me, so I go back through my photo images and pull from there. 

Here is the image I have used before. I took the photo on one of my many trips to Gibb's Garden. I was drawn to the play of the light on the shrub in the right hand side of the photo.  I painted it before and actually sold the painting! Since I'm having a tough time painting right now I thought I would work from this one again.

As part of my #dailysketch routine, I worked in my sketchbook with a fine black sharpie pen. I really liked how the drawing came out and used this as my reference for the next painting. It was time to play, so I used a mat board coated with clear gesso and then a coat of fine pumice gel. Not my usual Uart 500 paper! I just let myself go….. I did a watercolor underpainting to lay in the shapes and cover the white board. Then came the pastel….. the texture of the board was rough and took more pastel to cover it than what I was accustomed to. I worked on it for about 2 hours and stopped, I knew it was not finished , but I couldn't figure out what was not right about it. So it sat for the night and when I looked at it this morning, I saw it. It was flat…. my play of light was not there. Simultaneous contrast…… it all came back to me! I spent another hour making it right. I will say this is not my typical painting, but it was a fun exercise for me and  I think I will explore more paintings with this surface.