"South of France" pastel study.

My latest small work in pastel. I was trying something new (again!) and tasting home-made colored pastel ground. I mixed up some amount of Colourfix and blueish-purple watercolor and applied it loosely on board.

When board dried I did initial sketching with pastel pencil.

Then I used some turpentine and oil wash of manganese-purple and titanium white to establish my values.

Lastly I went from monochrome to full color and finished my painting with soft pastels.

I would change few thing here in there, but I'm happy with my study, it served the purpose and yes -

I like the colored background.

"Yellow Hibiscus". Oil WIP.

My latest painting on Gessobord - yellow potted Hibiscus from Longwood Gardens.
Beautiful plant with beautiful flowers, but I wanted to do something more complicated this time, therefore I went for combination of floral painting with painting of part of it's own frame. I love those arched frames, but currently those are our of my price range, so I'm cheating a little and just painting one.
It will be complimented with nice narrow simple-style Plain Air frame (the real thing!), so part I'm painting will become substitute for the frame liner. Hopefully it going to work...

"French Motif" pastel painting.

"French Motif"
12 x 12" Pastel on board.
Latest 12x12" pastel landscape painting with France in mind. This will be my last work in those square pastel series for a while. I enjoyed it, but have other projects to do and just as simple... I ran out of frames!..
Therefore My next post will be something different. Probably another oil.

"Provence Poppies"

"Provence Poppies"

12 x 12" Pastel on board.

Another 12x12" landscape in pastels.

Home-made surface, oil wash for underpainting.

I feel - I starting love working on this type of board with heavy brushed structure.

Looks like it is working for me well. maybe I would like to use another color for primer...

this one was medium gray. It was Clourfix, applied generously on factory-made

Ampersand Hardbord. Great support for... just about anything You want to put on it.