Chester and the Sea

I've just finished this painting of my lovely dog Chester, who died this time last year. The seaside was his favourite place.
It's watercolour and pastels on Wallis paper.

My office

Just thought I'd show a pic of the tiny space I call my office. The pastels and pencils sit ready waiting for me to get a gap in my work so I can do some more on my animal portraits.

Daler Murano paper

I'm continuing to compare pastel papers. For this portrait I've used Daler Murano paper and the dog is from a photo I found on the internet and his name is apparently 'Buddy'. At first, compared to the Fisher 400 paper, I found this paper a bit flimsy and insubstantial, and nearly gave up. But I persevered, and found that I actually really like it. I used a mixture of hard and soft pastels and pastel pencils. I recently bought about 40 new colours - mostly greys and browns, from the Derwent range of pastel pencils, and they certainly came in very handy for this portrait.

remiss

I'm sorry I've been very remiss about posting lately. I've got caught up in doing a larger painting, which is taking time to do as I'm very busy with work. I've been reading 'Color' by Betty Edwards. What a great book! I'm going to try and do all the exercises in the book as there's so much I need to know... This is a quite recent pastel painting (horrible of D I know - he looks like a layabout - which he isnt!) There are a few bits I like about this painting - I went a bit mad with the colour, which I'm pleased with, although I havent seemed to be able to get into that 'mode' since. It was also a breakthrough with using Wallis paper - which I had found difficult before. I did a colourful underpainting on this, and for the first time really enjoyed using the paper.

Working from life

Last year when I had the time I found myself making some pastel works from photos I had taken. It's so much easier and more comfortable working from photos, but I find my heart is never really in it. I'd really much rather be working from life because I think there is more soul in it, if you know what I mean. You are responding to what is living and happening in front of you in a spontaneous way, and it is much more meaningful. The difficulties are: one that I work very slowly and two, the idea of going out in public with an easel fills me with terror! I've got so much admiration for people like Rob at http://paintingwalesdiary.blogspot.com (sorry I don't seem to be able to do proper links). He paints plein air in all weathers and completes his beautiful paintings in about an hour! I think it would take me an hour to sort my gear out and that's before starting to mix the right colours which always seems to take me ages. I think the answer is to practice in my own environment with various media first and try and speed things up a bit!

Relaxing

I'm trying to use pastels as much as possible to draw things from life, so that I get a bit quicker. The hardest bit is finding the right colours when I have so many. I think the answer may be to decide at the beginning what colours I am likely to need, and to put them out separately.