37 Minute Painting

Another timed painting. This time the requirement was 37 minutes. I set my phone alarm and was shocked to hear it go off! I was checking it off and on, but suddenly it just rang, and here is the result.

This time I used Uart 600 grit paper, which is like a fine sand paper. It pulls the color of the pastels really easily so a lighter touch is required when painting than with the unsanded Mi-Teintes paper. I used a combination of photos for this one as I needed a creek, but I wanted some oaks and hills from around here. Not especially successful as far as I am concerned; the exercise was the point. I did get into the zone of painting even through I knew that timer would go off at some point.

24 Minute Painting

Following along with a pastels instructor, the by-word of the month is “fast and furious”. Well, for me, this means in less than 30 minutes. The instructor suggests 15 minutes. I decided to give myself “under 30” for a “fast and furious.” Here is the result.

The point of the fast-and-furious approach is to keep the artist from over thinking and overworking a painting. This exercise is invaluable as decisions have to made quickly and decisively. Pondering doesn’t happen! Instead it is like, hmm, let’s see; I think this could work. Grab, paint, run on to the next section. Top to bottom with swaths of color here and there to carry out a sense of continuity.

It worked out.

I won’t show you the first attempt.

High Desert Rain

I have had a perfectly lovely day today! Went out on a short road trip, did some photography, ate a Croque Madame for lunch, and drove through beautiful back country here where I live. Josh came along, and we had a nice day out. Once home, a nap, some coffee, and then, at long last, the pastels came out from hibernation! The result is more rain (we get none, I want some!) as subject matter. As pastels lend themselves to blurring and blending, I decided to use a long stroke of a finger tip, moving at an angle from top to bottom, to suggest that fierce rain one sees in the high desert. Dark background and a sunlit foreground. So fun to do!

Concrete Cucumber

For the past year I had a roll of Fuji Superia 200 loaded into my vintage Welta Weltini camera from the 1930s. It works really well, but the fact is I really don’t like the camera all that much. It’s a 35mm camera, a small folder, and an excruciatingly small viewfinder. It does have a built-in focusing “spot” for lack of a better word, but the reality is that the tiny, tiny viewfinder makes it an extremely awkward camera to use, and it is not a pleasant experience. I think I may decide to sell off some of my collection. I doubt I could make a profit on this, but anyway . . .

Here, a cucumber on my patio this summer. Even though its leaves are not the most healthy looking, it has produced, and continues to produce, very tasty cucumbers. I thought I had planted lemon cucumbers, but these are what came up. Awhile back, I just planted every seed I had left, and there you are. I also planted some vining beans in the same pot. Out of all the seeds I stuck in there, planning to thin them after I could discern what plant was which, only two came up! Both were non-lemon cucumbers. I just water it every day, sometimes twice when it is nearing the 100s or high 90s, and the result is we have been enjoying our small patio crop.

The tiny viewfinder caught my knee in the original scan, so I cropped this to make it a square and did some post processing along the way.