Click to bid or buy • 8x10in. • soft pastel on sanded paper • starts at $100
The other day my husband and I jumped in the truck to go watch the sun set over Lake Michigan. It was really cold out, but the truck was warm. We took lots of pictures and just watched the waves rolling in. Mesmerizing. We feel very fortunate to live where we do.
Watch a time lapse video of this painting on my Youtube channel.
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Click to bid or buy • 6x8in. • soft pastel on Canson mi teintes paper • starts at $100
I love walking along the beach in the winter.
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Click to bid or buy • 8x10in. • soft pastel on sanded paper • starts at $100
Sitting in the dunes, watching the waves on the lake. Love living here.
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Click to bid or buy • 9x12in. • soft pastel on sanded paper • starts at $100
This is based on a walk in the Ludington State Park with my husband, Steve. Hilarious story. We meant to walk for an hour. In fact, it was over two hours before we got home and we were so tired we just collapsed in our recliners, barely able to feed ourselves. Getting old is not for sissies, let me tell you.
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Click to bid or buy • 8x10in. • soft pastel on sanded paper • starts at $100
From a visit with my daughter and granddaughter. We went to the beach to watch the waves.
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Click to bid or buy • 8x10in. • soft pastel on sanded paper • starts at $100
Stopped by the lake to take a picture for later and brrr! it was so cold!
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Click to bid or buy • 10x8in. • soft pastel on textured gator board • starts at $100
Practicing my big skies.
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Click to bid • 8x8in. • soft pastel on sanded paper • starts at $100
I have been feeling a bit dramatic, lately.
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Sunsets are tricky. They’re beautiful to watch, but capturing them on paper is a different story.
I was scrolling through my photos references and a sunset picture caught my eye. I liked the dark clouds overhead, the band of yellow orange on the horizon and the dark lake with waves rolling in. But sunsets can be frustrating to paint. The colors you think ought to be there somehow don’t look right on the paper. However, I’d just learned a way of figuring out colors using the eyedropper tool and a color wheel in Photoshop, so I thought I’d try it and see what happened.
The first surprise was the little bit of sky peaking out on the left side of the piece. When I sampled it with the eyedropper tool, the color wheel showed a yellow green. Normally I would put an aqua in there, something more blue than green. The second surprise was the water. It registered as a dark reddish blue. I would have used a blue trending towards yellow there. Hmm. The third surprise was in the heart of the sun. That showed up on the color wheel as a bluish yellow, not a reddish yellow as I would have guessed. All of a sudden, this potential painting was not just another sunset. It was an experiment, and I was eager to see what would develop.
Winter Sunset Surprise time-lapse
I used a warm alcohol wash underpainting–red, orange and yellow–to start with. Then I blocked in whatever caught my eye, without thinking too much about what I was doing or where I would end up. I was careful to use the colors I discovered in the color wheel, however. When I got to the water I went back to my dark red to put in the waves and was very happy with the result. It all meshes together pretty beautifully I think. Sweet!
Winter Sunset Surprise, soft pastel on sanded paper with warm underpainting, 8×10″. $800.
On another subject, what do you think about a pastel class that is all about sunsets? Should we all paint the same sunset? Or each do a different one? Is a 3-hour class long enough to finish or should it be more than one session? Leave your comments and let me know what you think!
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Making an effort to do more daily paintings. Check out my Youtube page for more time lapses.
Those Clouds Look Interesting, soft pastel on sanded paper, 12×12″.
This one is inspired by a drive back from the Ludington State Park where we’d dropped off our camper for some friends of ours to use. I said something like, “Those clouds look interesting,” and Steve promptly pulled over so I could get some pictures. Next day I pulled them up on my computer and made a painting.
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