A second day of pastel...

Lacy Resting Places. Part 1, soft pastel on 7 x 9 storm green sanded paper (Richeson Premium). I often start by jumping right in from a photo reference and putting everything in to the piece. Here, I've selected some prominent oval shapes to include. I wiped out a few things that were misplaced with an eraser and a stiff-bristled brush. My primary goal for today is to keep things a bit more loose than I did in yesterday's project and use the paper color untouched as background color.

Part 2, soft pastel on 7 x 9 storm green sanded paper (Richeson Premium). Here I've taken advantage of my tendency to create patterns by using the inherently patterned Queen Anne's Lace flower as my focal point. It's smaller clusters occur in natural hexagon shapes, which means I can use randomized pointillism within an foreshortened hexagon to build it's structure. The companion flowers in this prairie are wild bergamot. These flowers are more like my hair--wild and curly, sticking up here and there at will--and are the controlled chaos portion of this piece.

Part 3, soft pastel on 7 x 9 storm green sanded paper (Richeson Premium). Here I've expanded on the structures of the background flowers and added some darker marks to represent some of the shadows inside the depth of the lace. The biggest plan for the next step is to increase the contras between the Bergamots and the background. I have a couple of choices here--to go toward darker values in the undergrowth or toward lighter values in the flowers. Because I really want the "lace" to be the primary focal point, I'm going to opt for adding shades. I might also use a few highlights on a couple of the purple flowers later.

Part 4, soft pastel on 7 x 9 storm green sanded paper (Richeson Premium). Darkening the undergrowth was a great way to increase the contrast between the wiry petals of the Bergamot flowers and the "storm green" of the sanded paper.

Part 5, soft pastel on 7 x 9 storm green sanded paper (Richeson Premium). In this step, I turned up the sun...bringing in brighter highlights onto the Queen Anne's lace and onto the frills of the purples flowers (plus this photo is slightly overexposed!). I'll need to cast a few shadows onto those two Bergamots tucked in under lace umbrella.

Part 6, soft pastel on 7 x 9 storm green sanded paper (Richeson Premium). I've enhanced the 3 Bergamots at the right with lighter value highlights and de-emphasized the other by using darker values, at least on the petals. I still need go a little darker for the ones under the "umbrella". Only a few more tweaks, and I can count this one as being finished.

Part 7, soft pastel on 7 x 9 storm green sanded paper (Richeson Premium). Ultimately this piece is finished (although it still needs a signature). Day 2 of my Pastel-a-Day completed! Yay-rah!