Great News! I have just been informed that I won a First Prize for my Rocky Canyon picture that I entered in the Chelmsford 4th July art festival. I'm so pleased.

This is the beach scene I did yesterday.  I enjoyed using the Pan Pastels but I should have used a paper with more tooth because It was difficult to add more highlights to the clouds in the end.  I think I'll do this one again on a better paper.

Today I have to take my paintings down to the Town Hall in readiness for the 4th July Art Show.  I am putting in three this year, so we'll see what happens.  Last year I was fortunate to get a second place ribbon.  They don't have a category for Pastels so my work has to go in the Art under Glass Category, which means that I am competing against water colorists.

Today I have been giving myself an exercise in using my Pan Pastels which I have only used once since I bought them and I wasn't too thrilled with them at that time.  But they were very much in evidence in New Mexico at the Convention and recently there has been a lot of discussion about them, so I decided it was time to have another attempt.  I'm doing a beach scene, mainly because I was keen to try my hand at some distinctive cloud formations in the photograph.  So far I'm enjoying myself with them and will probably finish tomorrow and post the end result here then.

This bridge is over a river near the town of Pontsticill in Wales. It's one of the photographs presented on Wet Canvas for the June Landscape challenge.  This was fun, I enjoyed doing this a lot, I always like the challenge of painting water,  I find trees to be more difficult to paint.

I've finished my coastal painting but because I drenched it in fixative it has buckled slightly in the middle.  Not sure why,  because the surface I used will take being scrubbed with water usually.  However, this time it has suffered a little so it is presently laying flat with two heavy books  and a potted plant on top of it in the hope that the buckling will straighten out.  I'm going to leave it like that for a week or so and then take a look to see  if anything has changed.

In the meantime I have started another painting of a bridge over a river in Wales which so far is going well and I'm enjoying it a lot.  It's probably going to take me several days to finish this one.

I have spent the last two or three days working on a picture of the National Seashore on Cape Cod, but I'm struggling with it and not happy with the progress.  Every time I look at it I see things that need to be changed.  I'll go back to it again tomorrow and have another go.

Well I did a few finishing touches to my picture of the Merrimac River picture and it's now in it's frame and hanging on the wall.  In real life, the sky is not quite as pink as it appears in this photograph, but sometimes the camera does lie.

It rained all day today and my car was in the shop for repairs so I was confined to the house, which gave me the perfect excuse to spend pretty much all day in my studio.   I tweaked my Winter in the Park picture a bit,  by lowering the height of the snow on the far bank so that it wasn't in line with the top of the bridge.  It looks better now.

On Sunday we went on a harbor boat ride from Newburyport and I took several pictures while we were out, so today I have been working on a painting from one of those phtographs.  It's just about finished now, so I'll be posting it tomorrow.

I've been working on this for two days, and as my husband went fishing today I had time to head to my studio and put in the finishing touches.  This is a park in Plymouth, Massachusetts that we visited in February.  The sun was shining but there was still a lot of snow around.

I wanted to do this one because while I was at the Convention I took a class on Winter Landscapes and was anxious to try out some of the things I learned there.  Making the water look like ice was probably the most challenging thing in this piece

Frustrating day today.  I spent all morning looking through photographs searching for a suitable subject to paint.  Finally decided on one and couldn't wait to get to my new pastels and paper.  But, nothing went right and after an hour at my easel with half the painting done, I hated it and took it into the bathroom and washed it all off!!  This particular paper is washable but it did leave an outline of my work which I should be able to cover up with my next effort.  I don't know what was wrong, I just couldn't seem to find my stride.

Just got back from the IAPS Convention (International Association of Pastel Societies) in Albuquerque, New Mexico - what a great time.  Met several people that I previously only knew from being on-line on Wet Canvas.  We had a get-together in one of the member's rooms which was really good.  They are all very nice and friendly.  I took in a couple of demonstrations by well-known pastel artists and picked up a lot of useful information, now I just have to put it into practice!

I also bought so much stuff at the Trade Show that we had to buy another suitcase to carry everything home.  My pastel collection is growing by leaps and bounds!  I have spent all morning organizing my supplies in my studio.  I took loads of photos of New Mexico so I'm hoping that I have captured one or two pictures that will be worthy of painting.