Sunflowers in Pastel, Baseball Note

I am so behind in posting and reading blogs. Wow. I was exhausted when Sue left and tomorrow I go to Georgetown for a workshop sponsored by the Austin Pastel Society with Desmond O'Hagan. It should be great. I have been preparing for this and resting from the marathon of painting with Sue and not posting.

Sue and I painted at McKinney Falls on the Monday after she arrived. On Tuesday we went to Regina's wonderful studio and we all painted sunflowers. You can see Regina's sunflowers on her blog.

It is always fun to see the different takes on the same subject by different artists. Sue sketches all the time and has fine tuned her drawing skills and does perspective without thinking about it. Regina was a drafter, so she sees lines very well. I struggle with perspective, as you know, so I decided to skip the dramatic shadows, lack of energy. I will partly blame the angle I was working from. The shadows were almost straight on to my view which is not great for showing the shadows and lines. I didn't want to struggle, I just wanted to paint and have fun.

These are my sunflowers. We worked on Colourfix pastel card, 9 x 12 inches. I will develop this just a little more to help the composition. I will run the bouquet out of the painting on the left and maybe darken the background a little. I will post the final one of these days.

These are Sue's with the dramatic shadows and window. The light was so great and interesting shapes were all around. Any painting is better if you have interesting negative space. Those are the shapes around the object and in between. Variety makes interest.

Wednesday we painted in the area, Thursday near Lake Travis in Austin and Friday near here. I will post about those days soon and show you the results.

Of course we had a little baseball in there as well. The Longhorns have played 10 games now and are undefeated. You can keep up to date on Joanna's blog. She has colorful reviews whether she is there in person or not! We went to San Marcos last night and watched them at the opening of the Bobcats' new stadium. A very nice evening and visited with Larry after the game. The Longhorns travel to Stanford this weekend. I will be learning and painting so I won't get to listen to the games, well maybe a little on Friday evening. Hook 'em!