Orange Door, Rocking Horse, sketch

I had a productive day today. I did a pastel painting of an orange door. There is a house across the street from Gene's mom's house that is light blue and has a bright orange door in the back. It is not exactly like my painting, but it gave me the idea and the basic shapes. The painting will be in an oval frame, so I shaped it in PhotoDeluxe as I didn't want to lay the mat on it until I am ready to frame. So it doesn't quite fit the digital mat, but you get the idea. It is on Art Spectrum pastel paper 9 x 12 inches, so will be 8 x 10 when finished. I did an under painting of dark orange where the blue is and dark blue where the orange is. Used alcohol to spread it into the tooth of the paper. I used a mixture of soft pastels. I took the photo before I added the last highlights with Sennelier pastels and have Gene, the critic, check my angles. I will post the finished product when it is matted. It took about 2 hours to do it.

I also got number 17 - milk carton and number 18 - crackers done for the scavenger hunt on wetcanvas. Amazing that I have that many done. Woohoo. The sketch is in my no name sketchbook, which is a copy of the Canson but the paper is not as nice. It is good enough for quick sketches though. I used a Prismacolor pencil. The ellipsis are better than the photo. The camera did that weird shaping. Really. The Prismacolor pencil doesn't erase well, so it is good to sketch with so you are not tempted to change things.

Today, Gene prepared a wooden rocking horse that I will paint. He sanded it and cleaned it up. The Family Crisis Center in Bastrop has a Festival of Trees as a fund raiser the Saturday before Thanksgiving. They auction off Christmas trees and other Christmas items that are donated and decorated by businesses and volunteers in the community. The Bastrop Fine Arts Guild does a tree every year and I am the committee chair for that. Gene bought this unfinished rocking horse last year for a fairly hefty sum, so I am painting it this year to donate back for the auction. Hopefully he won't buy it back again. :) It is a fun event with all the proceeds for charity. The Crisis Center serves four counties in the Bastrop area. We have volunteered there since 1997.