I worked on the pastel commission piece again this morning, while the light was nice at my pastel corner.  I would like to say that things look more organized as I go on, but I’m afraid they don’t.  I just get out more pastels, and surround myself with them.  I also needed to bring the piece down from the easel and lay it on a drawing board.  This really isn’t the recommended way of working on pastels.  The reason being, that you want the excess pastel dust to fall away from your painting, and not sit on top of it.

But, due to my recent neck problems, I have had to make some adaptions.  I turn the piece over very often, and knock any excess dust off of it.  Also, as I get closer to adding some details, I have to admit, I have to get my reading glasses out, sigh.  But, whatever works!  I haven’t done much with the face yet, a little with the jump, but I am still debating about it.  Having taken these photos this morning, I see something a little “off” about the horse’s rear-end.  Sometimes, taking a photo and looking at it on your camera, if you have a digital, or the computer, can give you a different perspective to look at it from.  Anything that helps you see the whole, and not the little bits.  The whole has to work together.

It happens so often, you work on a painting, you get a certain part of it working, it looks great, you step back and … ugh.  Everything else doesn’t work with it.  So you work and work and work to make the rest of it work for you.  Nope.  You may have to change your “precious” part.  I always remembe what my friend, and amazing equine artist, Rosemary Sarah Welch said to a workshop once, “don’t let it become too precious. ” Of course it sounded much better with her British accent, but you get the idea.  It is something on … a piece of paper, a canvas, a board, a this, or a that.

Yes, artwork is important, and we work hard at it, but, do not tie yourself up in one piece so much that it makes or breaks your day.  You learn from each piece you do, which reminds me of another fantastic artist, Dawn Emerson, who had us do a Quantity Exercise in a workshop.  How many charcoal drawings of a certain number of sculputures could we do in a specified amount of time?  You get this idea too, the more you do, the better you get.  It doesn’t even have to be a whole painting.  Do a 5 minute sketch, a section of a tree, whatever, just move your hand with something that will make a mark.  Muscle memory.

So, you can see some difference, I hope, between the work yesterday, and today.  I’m not always sure about computers, and whether they show the correct colors on different screens.

I did take time out to  take a photo of the three Quarter Horse babies that are wintering over here.  I was hoping they would run around.  But again, they were too interested in the green grass.  We still have very green grass here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.