Day three of my pastelista journey

Today I worked on a still life, dealing with the floral masses of hydrangea and its floral heads. This one required a little bit of scrubbing and problem-solving to get to this final piece. Rough patches seem to respond well to innovative solutions. I'm betting this piece will look so much better to me after a perspective-inducing good night's sleep.

Hydrangea Still Life, soft pastel on 5.25 x 8.24 Wallis sanded paper.

1. The starting sketch looks a little bit like a very simplified duck (left) and a rabbit (right). : )

2. To tone the off-white paper, I quickly blocked in the base colors.

3. I used a brush and Turpenoid to suspend the soft pastel pigments into a liquid and brushed them into the crevices of the sanded surface.

4. I blocked in the flowers that I wanted to retain structurally throughout the composition.

5. This part involved more structural development of the focal point flowers and expanding the range of values.

6. The yellow background wasn't working for me, so I swapped it into a purple-black, which allowed me to enrich the shadow portions of the piece and do some negative shape adjustments. I became a bit frustrated at this point, cursing my choice of flower!

7. After a little rant and a subsequent break, I intentionally pulled out a blue stick that I thought was totally *wrong* for the color palette, and was thereby able to use it as a tool to better see the petals and opted to use a deep blue violet to do some more negative shape modeling of the petals. I rarely use an outlining technique like this, but it seems to work well in a complicated mass like this. Ultimately I will bring in some brighter highlights and turn some of these extremely dark outlines to thinner, broken lines.

8. With some lighter lights, the hydrangea ball in the foreground is looking pretty good. I added some more vibrant hues to the young mass at the left. I've deleted some of the mass from the ball in the background. Still not sure about that part, though. A part of me wants to make it completely disappear...

9. I wiped out the back hydrangea mass with a dark pastel, some Turpenoid, and additional cover strokes to turn it into a consistent backdrop. I then added in the curly wood of the bouquet at intentional diagonals and did some updates to the bud-ball.

10. (Finished). The bud-ball needed to go back to more of a bright green mass, so I reworked that area and did a touch or two around the painting to ensure that the colors tie together throughout the composition. I'll add a signature later and take a final photo in the sunlight. The biggest things I learned today: examine and learn a little more about the anatomy of a particular flower family before beginning the painting part and always remember to simplify things for each painting that I want to finish in a single day. Things that I've learned previously and applied today: mist flowers throughout their studio session whenever artificial lighting is used.