Still experimenting

I have painted landscapes occasionally just in black & white, I find it an interesting change from using colour. So recently I thought why not try it with my perfume bottles?

I will need to work on the background some more but it is getting close to what I wanted. Although I am considering adding maybe just a touch of colour, maybe yellow or gold, not sure yet, I'll have to think about it.

Experimenting

Now that the studio tour is over it's back to work. I have been working on several pastels lately, trying new things some are working & some? well we will see. The first one is a view of the bottom of a river that my husband & I love to kayak on. The river is shallow, with trees on both sides & the sun often shinning onto the golden sands. I was having problems with the image, then after watching the movie Gerhart Richter Painting (great movie by the way, worth watching) & seeing him use his sqeegee I thought why not on my pastels? I have used one before for acrylic but never pastel. So I did it

It didn't quite do what I wanted but the result was still pretty good. I think I had to much pastel on the board. I'll definately try this again.
The next one I tried was a pastel that I had painted on Pastelboard. I had never used pastelboard before, it is a hard surface, like clayboard. I didn't like it. It doesn't have that same soft, velvety feeling of my usual sueded mat board. Because I didn't like what I had painted I was going to wash it off then thought maybe just wetting it I could get it to drip, it could be very interesting. So I sprayed it with water, a lot of water. This is what happened.

This is still wet but I think I really like this, can't wait to see it when it dries. I may actually buy more of this board just to do this if it stays like this.

Studio tour

Well the studio tour is over for another year. We had quite a few people through again this year. It's always fun talking to people about the art, explaining my process & getting their reactions. My daughter did really well with her scarves but then I knew she would. Her silk scarves are really very beautiful. Now we just need to find other venues for her to sell at. Now that the tour is over with it's time to get back to painting.

Count down to studio tour

I've been cleaning the studio, finally, and getting ready for the studio tour on Saturday. Actually I need to be ready for Friday because that is when the artists on the tour get to view the new artists. With my daughter joining me this year that means my studio will be part of the Friday night crawl. We've both been busy. Jara's been painting her scarves, baking cookies & I've been cleaning, wiring paintings & generally trying to get organized. I know it will all come together by Saturday but right now it seems like we still have a lot of work to do. Oh well back to work.