More revisions

I had always liked my flowers in this painting of Shell Creek, but it had never resonated somehow.

So I decided to add shadows and extend the hill on the left. The river of Goldfields is still prominent.

Help from my daughter

My daughter is a talented artist and I have asked her for help critiquing some of my paintings. I had already made revisions to this painting, eliminating much of the oak tree. She felt the remaining branch was still too distracting, taking the eye away from the rocks and flowers. She also thought the trail going off the canvas led you out of the painting.

 The tree has now become a stump, which is actually what did happen to this tree during the hard rains last winter. The trail is no longer leading out of the painting.

Revisions

The wonderful thing about pastel is the ability to revise. I was unhappy with this painting. The rocks seemed to be sitting on top of the grass and the trees were too dark. I also wasn't happy with the leaves, as I had wanted to capture the new green of them just leafing out.

 This is the revised painting. I think the new green is far more sucessful and is the color of the trees and the shapes of some of the branches.

Bowden Ranch

I love hiking the Bowden Ranch open space. It's a steep hike with great views over San Luis Obispo to Morro Bay in the west and Pismo Beach to the south. This view to the east shows the higher hills. The serpentine rock has helped create an environment that helps native flowers flourish. I often lose count of the number of different wildflowers I can spot here. In this picture you can see poppies, tidy tips, larkspur, goldfields and a chocolate lily. There are also shooting star and lomatium.

This picture shows the steep trail heading up the canyon. Ranunculus is blooming.

This painting, View from the Top, combined the view of the background mountains with some of the fields of flowers that can be seen on the ridge.

You can see where I took the inspiration for this painting. The trail is adobe clay and very sticky after a rain.

The moon became a setting sun. I was unhappy with the precious version and inspired by a sunset over Morro Bay from Windows on the Water. The setting is a cove north of San Simeon.

Blue Moon

Blue Moon

Allied Arts in Cambria recently announced their new show: Blue on Blue. That inspired me to create a night scene in shades of blue. The show will run in Cambria from January 6 to February 5.

8X8 canvases

Many of the local art associations have small canvas shows near Christmas. This poses a small problem for me, as pastel doesn't adhere to canvas. I usually paste my pastel paper to the canvas and paint on that, then coat with gel. However, after spraying with fixative this painting was really dark and even more so after the gel coat. So I decided to paint over the gel with acrylic paint, then coast again with gel.

The next painting was an attempt to paint directly on the canvas with pastel. The underpainting went fine as I used turpenoid to paint the pastel into the canvas, but then the pastel just didn't want to adhere to the canvas. So I again resorted to acrylic over the pastel, followed by the gel.

The last painting is pastel under gel. It is much darker than the original painting, but it still works.