This is a small. The goal was to work for one hour. Once my husband put on music everything started working nicely. It’s amazing how that happens. I only had an hour, but it might be worth revisiting this image in a larger size when I have a bit more time. 🙂
This is an 8×10” oil painting of a phoebe that lives for half the year in our yard. It posed for me sitting on top of an old apple tree that is covered in grape vines. It’s a beautiful bird – I hope I did it justice.
This is something I worked on this week.
This is from a morning in November with my husband and the dogs near the river.
I recently received a set of Sennelier pastels for my birthday and this is the first time I’ve used them. I was afraid the set had too many browns. I almost returned it! But I decided to keep it and in time get a few sticks of purples and pinks (which it is missing!) to round it out.
The sticks are buttery and have unbelievable coverage. And the colors are better on paper than they look in the box. They were more difficult to control than Rembrandt’s, but I’m glad I kept them. In time I’ll get better at handling them (I hope) and I do really like their feeling.
I love flowering quince. Working with it now in December has me thinking of spring. When this bush flowers, it’s a great show. Maybe we’ll have a vaccine by then? 🤞
I’ve been using pastels to try to break out of a rut I’ve been in. The pastels help for several reasons.
1. They are quicker than painting. 2. The paper is less expensive than canvas. 3. The pigments are pure.
This lets me try ideas easily and frees me up to take chances. It has the added benefit of forcing me to be braver with color than I usually am.
Anyway, at least the pastels have me making art again and, right now, that’s huge. I have a sense that what I’m learning now could blow my art out of the water if I can translate it to my paintings. But we’ll have to see how everything goes.
This is a pretty lose and abstract interpretation of our pear tree in blossom.
This is a slightly different use of the medium. I’m not yet sure how I feel about the outcome, but I did enjoy pushing the pastels to see what they could do.
I was trying to play with blurry/sharp focal points. There is a lot of pastel on the paper.
I am truly enjoying this medium.
I did start a painting from one of the ones I made yesterday. We’ll see how that goes. But for now, I’m happy to have found this little sliver of space for my soul in this world.
Tomorrow it’s back to the grindstone.
This was inspired by a car ride today. The colors have been beautiful this Fall.
This is small, which made it a little difficult for me. I like a certain amount of real estate as I work. It feels more energetic to me as I go. But I am happy with this one because I can feel the space in it.
Here is a landscape pastel. It has been a difficult time since March in my country. I have been watching the landscape and taking comfort in its cycles as well as it’s relative permanence.
I am (fortunately) extremely busy with my job at this point. But I did have a little time to make some art today.
Pastels are nice because even though they are messy, they are very immediate. It’s nice to be able to layer without waiting for them to dry. Also, once you have made the initial investment (admittedly costly) they are inexpensive to produce. That frees me up to have fun and see what happens.
A.M. Dietrich Art 