Sunday, August 20, 2017

Different yet the same . . .


Same scene
Different medium
As I sit at my bench and look out the window, this is the scene I see 365 days a year.
The cool part is that it's always going to be slightly different day to day.
Here in the middle of August, the Big Bluestem is green next to the earth
but pale pink gold up above.
It's a hard color to reproduce and I'm always surprised
when I start playing with colors only to find that the colors that work are not
the colors my mind told me they were.
Here I pulled a pale salmon pink from my pastel pencils and overlaid it with grey.
Blend with a little off-white and it works well.
The greens give it just a little depth.
The hills in the distance are miles away and dusty lavender in the haze of August.
I haven't used pastel pencils for a long time and getting used to the
chalkiness is challenging as is the way they blend.
Still, same scene, different.

Sunday, August 6, 2017

Holding loosely . . .

 It's funny how words and phrases come to you in bunches.
As if things are being revealed.
Slowing down and paying attention are what we need when this happens.
So it is with me.
Last week I posted on Facebook that I should take time, slow down, paint more loosely.
Of course, as soon as I said so, the reminder to 'hold on loosely' followed me everywhere.

My immediate object was to loosen my hand and try to get some depth to landscapes with shadowed clouds.
Instead of flattening the shapes,
I varied the intensity of color.

While there is no consistency yet,
these little studies are taking me
out of my comfort zone.

Play.

Experimentation.