A Different Kind Of Apple

I know this subject has been painted by so many artists that it's become banal but I wanted to paint it anyway.  This is on a small piece of Ampersand's Aquabord.  I don't know why I don't use this more often.  It's a really fun surface on which to paint.  Also, it keeps me from blending everything to death (which is my normal inclination) because it's almost impossible to get a smooth wash on this surface.  The paint lifts very easily which made this subject fun.  I painted everything and then used the stem of a q-tip dipped in water to lift the spots on the cactus and apples.  The spikes were scraped out with a mat knife.  I would have had better control with an exacto knife but I was too lazy to go get it and the mat knife was right there begging to be used.

A Different Kind Of Apple

Image Size 6" x 6"

Watercolor

Floating Flower

Here is my second oil pastel.  It's a little bigger than the first one.  I like the first one better because it has a better sense of light and shadow.  The support I used for this was a blue archival mat board.  You can see bits of the blue peaking through in the leaves.  The color of the ground made it very hard to get the white to not look muddy.

I've decided I need a larger collection of colors.  What I have is very limited and there are no neutrals.  I know I should be able to mix them but I don't seem to have that ability yet.

I had fun playing with the textures on this one.  I did a scribbly sort of figure 8 pattern on a lot of it.

Floating Flower
Image Size 6.5" x 9.5"
Oil Pastel
Unframed

Romania

The location for Virtual Paintout this month is Romania.  What a beautiful country!  I think the Google truck must have been there in the spring because everything looked so fresh.  I spent a couple of hours looking through the country roads.  I wanted to stop but I had to see what was around the next curve, and the next, and the next.  Well you get the picture.  Finally, I got hungry and that was the end of the search online and the beginning of the new search for something good to eat.

This one is done with soft pastels.  I wanted to work with the oil pastels again but thought this scene would look better in the soft pastels.  After I finished this, I did do an oil pastel painting which I was going to post but after I took the photo of it, I noticed that I need to add some more darks.  It's funny how a painting looks done but a photo of it show it's flaws so clearly.

Romania
Image Size 7" x 10"
Pastels

Sunstruck

Oh boy, was this fun!  I found a new blog this week called the oil pastel review and was inspired to try oil pastels.  I remembered that I have some oil pastels that I've never used.  I think they were my dads and they were probably purchased in the 1960's.  They are probably inexpensive ones but it was fun playing with them.  I thought that working with these would basically be like working with soft pastels but they felt very different.  I have a lot to learn about them but I think the more expensive the supplies, the more oil and less wax there is in the sticks.  These were pretty waxy feeling  but that was okay.  The surface I used for this was a small piece of archival mat board to which I had added a layer of fine pumice gel.  It was the perfect surface for this medium.

I'm curious whether or not this will ever dry completely.  It's not wet like an oil painting is when first painted, but if I run my finger across it, some color lifts.  It seems like they wouldn't completely dry since if they did, the oil pastel sticks would also be dry and would be unusable, right?  Since the ones I have are about 50 years old and are still soft, I'm assuming that I will have to frame this medium behind glass as I would a soft pastels painting.

I will definitely be trying this medium again soon.

Sunstruck
Image size 3" x 4.5"
Oil Pastels