Painting Apples Yet Again, Pastel

I painted yesterday at the gallery.  I was painting a still life of apples and a pear.  I intended it for the Challenge of 200 paintings.  By the way, did I tell you the Challenge on Norma Wilson's Blog is for 200 paintings.  She started from a book by Carole Katchen, 200 Great Painting Ideas for Artists. I was only going to do the one, but what the heck, I would only have 199 to go.  :)  I will just follow along with Norma and see who gives out first.  My first painting was "delicious" and I painted the guacamole.  I am starting late so will have to catch up.  I will go back and do the first few soon.

Meanwhile back to yesterday.  I was excited to work on the painting of fruit and forgot that part of the challenge was to paint fruit that was cut up.  I remembered about the time I was finishing.  This will make a  delay in the catch up plan.  So this will just be a Jo's Notion and I will paint my second challenge on Friday.  It will be just the pear and one apple as I ate one of the apple models today.

Odd Man Out, Pastel on Pastelbord, 7 x 5 inches

I used one of Lea Cundy's bowls for the apples.  You can see her work at Blue Donkey Studios across the street from my Gallery and on her website.  The bowl has wildflowers on the inside, very pretty and useful.

You can purchase this painting on Jo's Notions or my website.  $50.00 with free shipping in the USA.

New Pearathon a la Regina

For you artists that love sketching/drawing/painting/sculpting (?) pears, this site is for you. Regina has started a Pearathon page for lovers of pears. There are a few rules to check out and then send the links to your pears on Picasa, Flickr or where you store your photos to add to the wonderful images on the site.

Regina and I had an art show a few years ago called the "Pastel Pair" which featured our pear paintings. It was so much fun. Oh, my gosh! I just looked and it was June 4, 2005. And, as usual, I regress.

Back to pears, they are almost as much fun for me as painting apples. I will include a painting here that I did as a demo when I had a show at the First State Bank here in Bastrop. I don't have a good photo of it to submit to the Pearathon, but it was one of my favorite pear paintings so I will show it to you anyway.

I can't find the record of it to see the name, etc. It was 5 x 7 inches, pastels on purple Daler-Rowney paper. Someone won it as a door prize.

I made it larger in Photo Shop Elements, but you know that it is hard to make more pixels than you already have and I could only find the small thumbnail photo. Sad, isn't it? I'm glad I keep better records, now.

While looking for a better photo, I found a photo of my first pastel which calls for another post. Hmmm.

Back to Basics, Acrylic Pears

I'm back to painting in acrylics. Regina is working on a pears project so in anticipation of that I decided to paint a couple of pears. I painted over the Last Flags which was a practice piece and a way to get outside and paint. I painted inside today. It is a beautiful 69 degrees out there, too. Ah well.

I painted a still life of pears on a table and tried to use my notes from the other day. A fairly quick exercise of a little over an hour.

Opposites Attract
Acrylics on Canvas Panel, 5 x 7 inches

This will be for sale as a Jo's Notions on my web page for $50 including postage.