I've been enjoying the pastel studies lately, but I'm frustrated with the limited range of greens available to me. I've gotten spoiled by all the lovely watercolor and oil ones. So today I got the gouache back out to try. I've been thinking about it anyway, and then my neighbor was having  a magnolia tree taken down. I brought in a number of blossoms since I hated to see them going to waste. I had fun testing out the gouache over my morning tea. I used the same brown kraft paper I was using for the pastel forest studies as well. I'm still having trouble getting used to the texture of it and the color mixing, but I'm happier with these than the ones I had tried before. I just bought a couple more greens to add to my basic kit. Now I need to get back out and try this in the forest, but still life is always a good first step to keep things simple.

I’m back to fast moving work again. I’ve had several paintings going lately, including the one above. It’s a little smaller than most of mine plus quite simple, so it was really a two session affair. Again, after struggling with a print that won’t get there, it felt good to dive into something where I could see immediate results.

Pen and ink has also been a lot of fun lately. I started my food journal this week (for three days before the holiday, anyway, and then we’ll see), and that’s got me doing some fast sketching with a fat, felt tipped pen plus a little tone with a brush pen. I’ve carried that over into a new series of self portraits, just for fun. I joined a facebook group called Self Portrait Sundays, so that’s inspired me to do another batch.

I spent the evening at my work table last night with baseball on the radio and a commission to finish. When I was done I did another quick self portrait and also a sketch of my studio helper Mr. Darcy. I haven’t been drawing him much lately and have been missing that. Plus at the bottom is yesterday’s food journal page.

I’ve started a series of quick, fat pen sketches this week. I’m back doing a food journal for a few days. It makes me think about whether I really want something enough to sit down and sketch it, which helps me keep from just wandering through the kitchen and grazing. I’m enjoying the fast pen work and have also been doing a couple of self portraits along the way as well. I’m using a fat felt tipped pen on these along with a Pentel brush pen filled with warm dark gray ink.

A lot of my recent work has been that print of the live oaks, but I've been really struggling with it. It feels good to jump to some quick sketching and get some immediate gratification as a break. I'm also back working on the waterscape series in oils. I'll have a new one of them to show here quite soon. In the meantime, I'm on tea break to post here, but back to it soon. 

I've been walking daily in the forest lately thinking of trying some oils of it, as a break from the water paintings, but watercolors (my normal plein air medium these days) don't give me enough depth to work from in forest scenes. They're fine for wider landscape or water pieces, but the forest has a lot more density and depth, and I've never been happy with my watercolors inside it.

So I got my pastels out this week for the first time in several years and pulled the big French box easel down from its high shelf. (I usually just take a cushion and do watercolors in my lap.) You can see my set up at the right.

I had forgotten some of my colors, what and where they were, but it felt good to work in pastels again. They're the most immediate medium I use. There's no brush or intermediary. You just pick up a hunk of color and go.

I got all excited about the sycamore and started a painting of it the next day. It's simpler and more styleized than most of mine, and I'm going to keep working on it (I only had three hours by the time I started it before I had to be somewhere else. We'll see where it goes when I get the chance to get back to my easel. I'm also hoping to keep doing more studies and see what else I come up with.

My minister Steve Montgomery retired yesterday after 19 years of leading Idlewild Presbyterian Church. I don't often sketch during worship, but I felt like I needed to mark the occasion, and drawing it for me is a way of memorializing it. I did one sketch during the prelude and one during the children's sermon, and then I paid attention the rest of the time. Sketching is a deep way of paying attention, but it also distracts me from other elements of what's going on.

I was honored that they used my artwork on the bulletin for the last Sunday. Steve Berger had written a song for Steve M. that went well with it, so we used my print to illustrate the song, and it ended up on the front of the bulletin. I love this photo by Frank Kelly of Steve holding my bulletin and listening to a hymn that was commissioned for him. It's powerful for me to belong to a church that understands the importance of the arts in marking these moments and that encourages the artists and musicians who belong to the congregation.