I painted for a couple of hours today and this time I'm trying to inject more color into my work.  My last picture was critiqued as having too many mid tones, and I have to say that I agree with this assessment.   It looks flat and uninteresting.  I'm liking what I have done so far on the current project, we'll see how the finished article looks!

Well I finished my bridge over the river today.  I took the photograph while we were visiting family in England but I can't remember exactly where we were at the time.  I'm sure I made a note of the place at the time but I seem to have mislaid the note!

This picture is actually 11" x 11" square which is a change for me, but I had a frame and mat that I wanted to use, so I did the picture to fit.  Because of that it was a bit difficult to photograph and shows the mat at the top and bottom but not at the sides.

Update:  I have now found the note I made, and it seems that the location of this bridge is in Bourne, Lincolnshire.

This weekend I didn't get any painting done, but we did drive down to Plymouth to go to the gallery opening of the artist that I have taken a couple of weekend workshops with.  It was a bit of a rush because we were already committed to driving some friends to Manchester airport which is 20 miles in the other direction.  However, we managed it and were glad that we did.  Her art is wonderful and I think the gallery opening was quite successful.

Today I have been working on a piece that I started last week.  It's a river scene from a photo taken during a visit to England.  I may get it finished tomorrow and post it here then.

I competed this today.  I don't like it at all, I couldn't seem to get the effect I was looking for, not sure why, though it could be because I was using a light grey Sansfix paper which is totally different from anything I have used before and I didn't care for it.   Now I guess I can be accused of being a bad worker who blames her tools!!

The scene itself is from a photo taken over 25 years ago when my husband and I were first married.  It's in Derbyshire, England which was a favorite hiking area for us at that time.  In the actual photo I am crossing the stones with our dog Ria, and I did attempt to include us in the pastel painting but I didn't like it and went back and erased us.

Well, I finished my picture of the Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico.  I didn't take this photograph myself, so I have to assume that this is the driveway leading up to the house.  I really struggled with this one, the shadows gave me so much trouble. I completely erased the driveway twice and restarted, but I'm still not happy with the result.

I have spent most of this afternoon working on a picture taken in Taos, New Mexico of an adobe building.  It's quite a way from being finished and I'm struggling with it because it has lots of shadows.  However, I am persevering. 

Today I have ordered some more art supplies from Dick Blick my preferred source, mostly sanded paper and a few more pastels.  Sanded paper is wonderful to work on, it takes so many layers of pastel.

I just finished this one this morning.  It's one of the selected pictures for the April Landscape Challenge on Wet Canvas.  I was attracted to it because of the colors and I love doing water and reflections.  It's the River Wenatchee in Washington State.

It's a beautiful day outside, so I think I'll put my painting aside for today and get out in the yard and potter about in the dirt.  

I finished this picture today which I worked on for two days.  It was challenging for me because it is done in Pan Pastels which are a different type of pastel.  They consist of pastel which is in a cake form and contained in small round containers which lock together for storage.  They are used with special tools, reminiscent of make up sponges, but more durable. It is fun to work with Pan's but a very different technique and the resulting picture tends to have a softer appearance. (this may not be true for experts, but it's certainly true for me!)

The photo reference was taken at Cadover Bridge, which is a spot in on the edge of Dartmoor in England which we went to as a family when I was a child.  This particular snapshot was taken with the bridge itself behind me and I took it on a trip there with my sister in more recent years.

I have spent two days working on this picture.  I thought it was finished after the first day but then I went back in the changed several things.  I was trying to work in a more loose fashion, but the more I tweaked it, the more detailed it became.   It's still probably the least detailed of all the art I have done to date.  

It's a photo reference from the March Landscape challenge on Wet Canvas  - several other people have done the same picture and it's always interesting to see how others interpret the same photograph.  

Update:  I worked on this some more after receiving some constructive suggestions from people  I consider to be experts.  The feeling was that the bush in the middle got in the way and stopped the eye from moving on into the picture, so I have changed it slightly, removed the bush and suggested the continuation of the stream on to a small pond at its end.  

I have been working on this picture for the past three days.  It was a lot more difficult than I anticipated and I'm not altogether happy with it. 

The reference photo was taken by my brother in law at a place called Dockey Wood in Hertfordshire in England during bluebell season (obviously!), and it's really true that the woods are just a carpet of blue at that time of year.

That's one of the things I miss about England, the abundance of bluebells and primroses that grow wild in the woods and hedgerows during the Spring.  In this part of the United States we don't get them at all, though I have managed to keep some English primroses going through our bitterly cold winters by covering them with leaves in the Fall to protect them.  But bluebells seem to be non-existent, though I have seen them in the Northwest part of the country where the climate is similar to England.