Pond Light, 12 x 16 pastel on board

I went back to my neighborhood pond this morning to paint for the first time since spring of 2008. I did a lot of paintings here last year, then grew tired of it.

But today I went back and it was all fresh and new and quite different! There are new tall bushes with light green flowers, and the warm, humid light of early morning was quite lovely.

A number of people stopped to say that they were pleased that someone was painting there because it is such a lovely spot!

I recently purchased the book Mastering Composition by Ian Roberts and I spent a lot of time on this painting thinking about the compostion. I opened up the foreground to allow the eye in to the water, then up to the opening in the grasses, then along a distant light green path to the building and trees in the upper left corner.

I also worked hard at keeping things simple! This sounds strange, but I know that I normally overdo my trees, rather than getting the right shapes and values to begin with.

It was a great morning and I hope to spend more time outside this fall and sharing on this blog!

Painting in the Rockies

I'm back from a wonderful week painting in the Colorado Rockies and giving my second workshop of the summer. The weather was very nice, the students were great! A big thanks to Margie and Glen Patterson in Allenspark for all they did to make this a great experience. But painting in an area with little humidity or "atmosphere" had its challenges for an East Coast painter. Still, it was hard to beat the wonderful feeling of standing outside looking at the mountains, trees, and wildflowers and trying to capture them in pastel.

Now it's back to work. My class at Montgomery College starts on Monday with an almost full class--the largest ever. So I'm going to have to really work hard to keep up with everyone. But I enjoy this type of challenge.

Doing the two workshops this summer really reinforced my feelings that teaching is what gives me the most joy. I loved both workshops and all the people in them. And I look forward to having six new people in my class at MC. I love pastel and I love sharing that joy with others.

The other thing that was reinforced was my love of painting outside. The cool, wet spring kept me inside for most of the time that I would normally do plein air. But now it is late summer and the days are warm and the light is soft. It's a lovely time to go out to paint and I've finally had the time to get back to it.

And speaking of joy--I treated myself to the complete set of 400 Schminke pastels! I've been wanting this set for a long time and now it is here, sitting on my counter. And today, I began working with them and they are really wonderful.