Little Landscapes

Getting ready for paint out/plein air season. These little landscapes are practice, practice working fast and loose. The small size helps. I'm trying to push the color beyond local color and use up scraps of a variety of pastel papers. So far Wallis paper toned with Burnt Sienna is the winning paper. This is a fun exercise. All paintings are 4" x 6" soft pastel.

The Visit

Working with cruciform compositions. The weather has been gray and I needed some color.

The Visit, 22" x 22" pastel

More in Black & White

More work using ink, acrylic, graphite and charcoal. I added a little pastel just for fun. I'm still having a good time with texture and marks.

Storm, mixed media 30" x 22" 

Alleyway, mixed media 30" by 11"

A Gang of Voices

A couple of drawings that resulted from playing with mixed media. These were created with black ink and charcoal. I erased into the charcoal and applied acrylic paint with a brayer. I like the textures and depth created by subtracting with the eraser and layering with paint and brayer.

 A Gang of Voices,  22" x 30" Mixed media and pastel

Shouting into Cotton, 22" x 30" Mixed media

Black & White

A couple of abstract compositions in black and white. I used charcoal, graphite and black acrylic for these drawings.

More Marks

I spent the weekend experimenting with mark making and layering. Make some marks. Paint over the marks. Make more marks. Try to find balance and an interesting composition. I used ink, water soluble graphite and acrylic paint. Having fun. Seeing where they lead me.

Add and Subtract

I'm still confined to sitting with my foot elevated for part of the day. This gives me a lot of time to sketch. I'm working on a series using a high horizon line. I've been adding some color to the background. Mostly I work with charcoal, graphite and an eraser. I enjoy the give and take of adding tone and subtracting with an eraser. I like the textures I can create. The paintings below were done  today.

I found a great video of painter Barbara Moody using this process. She works in layers and layers, applying charcoal and erasing to create drawings that change, metamorphosing from image to image. Here's the link.
http://www.barbaramoody.com/pages/drawings.html