More Catch-up: Day 11 > Attention Seeker

from January 11, 2012

Attention Seeker, a soft pastel on 5x7 royal blue (navy) Art Spectrum Colourfix sanded paper.

1. The intent here is to create and retain some majorly fluffy, massive, ethereal clouds in the background. The paper color is shown in the upper right, a mass of green was layed in for the foreground grasses, and a combination of blues and violets were used to rough in the clouds before blending with my finger. I'm starting to get really smooth fingertips.

2. Here I've lightened the rest of the sky so that more of the wispier clouds will ultimately retain this pale blue color. I've sketched in a singular coneflower, a little patch of Bee Balm, and additional texture for the foreground grasses.

3. Here I've darkened the main portion of the sky to a middle cyan blue, added the structural highlights and shadows to the coneflower, and added more mass to the foreground grasses. Thus far, this piece, too, has been created without the use of a fixative. I've used up a lot of tooth and might have some issues getting more details in the foreground. Might have to come up with an interesting solution... I want to enrich the sky color to a deeper blue, closer to the original blue of the paper. Here's an instance where I wish I had purchased the Art Spectrum pastels that match the paper colors. I'm off to a dinner party, so I won't get back to this until later tonight. Crazy for me to be attending 3 major social events in the same week. Cuts in to the creative time...

4. I've followed through on my plan to enrich the color of the sky and add some other enhancements to the clouds. Primarily I used a warm, pale peach to add in a few highlights. I came back quite exhausted after tonight's dinner party, which means that my tiredness plays a role in how far I can take this piece. I have committed to finishing each piece on the calendar day on which it was started. At the very least, this means that I'm not allowing myself to do any reworking or further enhancements until the Pastel-a-Day journey completes. Tomorrow, as they say, is another day!