I spent most of the day today in my studio working on this picture.  I tried something new on this one - did a rough hard pastel sketch, just blocking in the main color areas, then washed the whole thing with alcohol.  This dried very quickly and then I did my pastel painting as usual on top of the underpainting.  I love this method, and plan to do it again.  I think I may have to be careful about the type of paper I use though, some paper might buckle. 

This was part of the February challenge that I posted about earlier.  I'm interested to see if other people have chosen this particular picture to paint and how they have interpreted it.  It was fun to do.