I decided that since I have been spending a lot of time following Duane Keiser and he works in a small format for his daily painting, I might as well give it a try.   As I mentioned (probably several times) below, I have been doing 5 X 7 pastels for the 100 Pastel Challenge, but I decided to add another layer of complexity into my day by starting a new series that I am calling “MiniPics”.

This first painting is in pastel and even though it is only 5 X 5, it took about two hours to complete.  First, I haven’t been able to determine the pastel paper.  It was a loose sheet and may have been Mi Tientes…not sure.  I chose to use a warm grey paper. Then I decided to work in my softest of pastels, mostly Unisons………oops!   It was fun, but the paper filled pretty quickly and I had to scrape off and redo some areas.  Definitely not my favorite thing to do.

In any case, here is my first of I hope many small paintings (I even went out today and took advantage of various President’s Day sales to pick up some square frames.

This first picture is of the finished (well, almost…I need to work on more value change on the right side of the wooden stand) piece, appropriately call “MiniApple”.   Then, underneath you’ll see the steps from the original sketch to finish.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed doing it.  (By the way, I’m still going to finish the 100 Pastel Challenge this year and continue working on larger landscapes as well).  Please know that comments are always welcome……..especially, if you can tell me how to get clear, clean signatures on soft pastel.  Mine either look oddly shaped or scraped into the surface!)

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 20th, 2011 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Color, Pastels, Still Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.