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!