Paris Scene

On blue paper, pastel pencils and chalk. Now I'm motivated to search my books and photographs and do more Paris scenes, or French scenes. Also, my passport is about to expire. I'm feeling a sense of urgency now. I'm not saying I'm leaving right now, but it's just a matter of time. You always go back to Paris.

Figure Practice

I thought I would practice drawing people a little bit today. Something I really struggle with. Well, I fell in love with the gardner that I did in my little sketch book, so like a beginning artist, I decided to put him in a picture. I couldn't leave well enough alone. So, I put him in a goofy looking garden. Yes, I'm in love with making little circles for leaves on trees. I don't know what my problem is. I used my pastel pencils. Did I mention I can't stand them? Not enough colors, but my drawing is too small to haul out the jumbo chalk pastels. I do like this figure though. Not a lot of detail, but the point gets across.

Doorway

I did this one in colored pencil. My revelation for today is that if I press lightly, I can get color to cover the whole page, somehow, someway. I don't always have to press hard to get bright, bold colors. The point still comes across.

Peonies

So, I thought putting this on pink paper would be cool considering all the flowers were pink, but I was at a loss of how to color them in. So, there's an orangish one in the backgroud. I felt compelled to try to sketch these out, because they don't last very long. I did this with pastel pencils.

Water

This one I like better. It's not great, but at least I think it's more recognizable as wooden posts coming out of water, with reeds, and a bird. I sketched it out with color oil pastels. I want to go back to serious sketching and drawing. I'm not sure if it's the summer time, but I'm just not liking anything I do. I can't concentrate with all the sunshine and warm temperatures.

Summer Clouds, Are you Sure?

Here's where I've decided to go back to drawing something, and then color it in . I didn't do that here. I tried to work from Pastel work book, and she had a really groovy picture of a summer sky with clouds, trees and hills. I did not capture that same beauty. Not really sure what I did.

Poppy Field with Red House

I did this one with chalk pastel on light gray paper. I did this based on an exercise from my pastel workbook, but I read very few of her directions, and just tried to copy what I saw. I can write a million things I don't like about it. But I won't. I'm going to try another scene, but use more sweeping areas of color. It's like this needed to be on green or brown paper, so the areas where there are no chalk strokes don't appear so stark white. Also, I want to get better at skies.

Kitchen Table

I'm still trying to work with pastels. Ugh. I think I should have stuck with finishing this one in colored pencils or crayon. The colors don't do anything for me. I should have exaggerated the colors in pastel. They don't pop for me. The light and shadows didn't work out. This does look like my kitchen table however, in a Charlie Brown sort of way. I wish I had more time to practice. Oh well, some day.