Day 45 "Cumberland Island Beach house"

"An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day." Henry David Thoreau
My trip to Cumberland Island was like an early morning walk; a blessing for the whole day except for the no-see-um bugs. :-)
This the the beach house or ferry house at Plum Orchard. The round structure is more resistant to hurricane winds and I wonder if they knew that when they built it in the 1930s.
I love the light and shadow cast on the gravel road by the live oaks covered with moss. The island had a special light that permeated everything.

"Cumberland Island" 8" x 12" on Uart paper with an oil wash underpainting

Day 44 "morning Mist Valley Head"

The Academy Awards are on and you're probably watching them. Go "Kings Speech"
Here's my "Pastel for the Day".
"Morning Mist Valley Head"
I wanted to capture that high key coloring of the haze from a humid summer morning. 

"Morning Mist Valley Head"

Day 43 "Buckeye Meadow Evening"

"Buckeye Meadow Evening" was created on Uart sanded pastel paper with an underpainting washed into the sanded paper using alcohol - rubbing not drinking.
My Tuesday evening class is exploring different underpainting styles. The first lesson was using thin oil wash. Now we're working with the alcohol wash. 
Step 1 involved drawing the initial shapes and then adding a light coat of pastels  according to value. Prussian blue in the shadow area and orange in the sunny spots. This allows you to see the composition in simple shapes and colors with time to adjust if needed.

Step 2 shows the underpainting after I applied the alcohol. There's also a bit of pastel in the sky and distant mountains. 

And here's the finished step. The underpainting is covered and I'd like to develop the technique of leaving some of the underpainting showing. Maybe the next one!

"Buckeye Meadow Evening" 8"x12" on Uart sanded paper with alcohol wash then pastel

Day 42 "Plum Orchard Sunshine"

I'm returning again to sunny Cumberland Island, GA. The October sunlight was strong and warm but had the slant of late fall which creates good shadows even in the middle of the day.
These gray February days in Lexington are getting very boring and I'm longing for spring so I can get outside and do some on location drawings.

"Plum Orchard's Sunshine" 12" x 8" on Wallis Belgium Mist sanded paper

Day 41 "Plum Orchard"

"It's never to late to be what you might have been." George Elliott
Plum Orchard is a beautiful mansion once belonging to the Carnegie family on Cumberland Island, GA which is now a National Seashore. We visited the island in October and stayed with a friend who was volunteering for 2 months with the Park Service. It's a wonderful, pristine island full of sunlight and dramatic shadows. No vehicles are allowed except for the Park Service and the island is free of the commercialization of the other Georgia Islands. Thanks for a great adventure, Deb.
This drawing is probably the best one I've done since starting this project. I knew what I wanted to capture and why when I took the photograph. Then I carefully composed it in the camera before snapping. The tiny digital camera screen is a big help to see the composition and contrast of your photo which translates into a good drawing. 
I think I'll keep this one and maybe turn it into an oil painting.

"Plum Orchard" 12"x8" on Wallis Belgium Mist sanded paper

Day 40 "Meadow Morning"

"Pray for Peace." me
As I listen to reports of violence against the citizens of Libya by Gadhafi it's hard to write about art when other happenings are so horrible. It reminds me of being an art student in 1970 and asking my teacher, "what is the relevance of painting a nude when soldiers are dying in Vietnam?" She said, "You have to answer that for yourself."
Art is my solace, comforter and a window from my soul to the world and from the world into my soul.
God created this beautiful world; mankind is slowly destroying it and my heart weeps. 
I try to put peace and beauty foremost in my work to bring that feeling of peace to myself and others. We whiz through life at top speed but we need to slow down, breathe and look around us. Notice light coming through the trees, the color of the grasses as the sun sets, how blue is the sky in autumn, there's purple in the shadows.

"Meadow Morning" 8"x12" pastel on Uart paper with an oil wash as the underpainting

Day 39 "Quinault River Edge"

"True life is lived when tiny changes occur." Leo Tolstoy
Trying "Quinault River's Edge" by following the photoshop improvement of the previous pastel. It seems to have too many points of interest. I need to decide what's the most important part and emphasize that with value change.
I think I need to take out some of the pines and make the sunlit strip more interesting, soften the light blue color of the bleached out fallen logs.
My students and I have observed that a finished pastel drawing seems to improve when we wrap a piece of wax paper over the drawing for safe transportation home. I think the wax paper reduces the details and the large masses are emphasized. Glassine paper is a safer paper for wrapping a pastel, but wax paper is convenient. Just don't use wax paper on a drawing in the summer when the heat of a car can melt the wax onto your drawing.

"Quinault River's Edge" 8" x 12" on Wallis Belgium Mist sanded paper