Pompeiian Peaches

Go Here to Bid
Pastel on Black Paper, 10" x 10"

Three days ago I went to the Pompeii exhibition at the
National Gallery of Art in DC. It was very impressive.
They had some mesmerizingly beautiful sculptures, and
some wonderful frescoes and small pieces of paintig.

This started out as a set up with a picture of a painting by

Luigi Lucioni (one of my favorite aritsts - fabulous realist

paintings, deceased) behind the peaches. Gradually it

evolved into this picture, which appears to be a rip off from

a Roman fresco, but is merely inspired by one. It was fun

building up the pastel, spraying it, and see what would

happen after that.

Thanks for visiting today.

Ariadne, after Greek, c. 300 BC

Pastel and Carbon Pencil on 18" x 24"archival White Paper,

image 11" square $85.00 Go Here

This is another "veils of color" drawing, done with mostly

Nupastels, vine charcoal, and a carbon pencil. I could do these

drawings/paintings forever.

It is interesting. Many people consider pastels drawings. But,

yesterday, at the end of a class I teach at the Art League School

in Alexandria, Virginia, called "Painterly Pastel", we had a critique

and everyone put their work up on the wall.

I asked the question, "if you were to just walk in here and look at

these for the first time, would you call these "drawings", or,

"paintings". Every one of them said "paintings". And, I think that

is true. It is because of the power of color, even when there

are a lot of lines involved, as in the drawing above. One is drawn

in by the color. Even in a simplistic color scheme such as this.

Thanks for visiting today.

Priscilla

Pewter and Cherries with Turquoise Fabric

Pastel on Wallis Sanded Paper, 4" x 4" $100.00

This is a fragment that I chose to select out of
a larger still life that was placed inside of a black
"drawing theater" - a black box that is only open on
one side. It is fun to place objects in it and then play
around with the angle of lights shining on still life objects
in the box.

Different types of effects can be created by how
far inside the box the objects are placed, and also,
from how far an angle the light shines in, or across.
I use this in my drawing classes with just black and
white objects to teach tone and value recognition.
But it was fun having this colorful still life contained
in this box, and even more fun working on the
sanded paper, which never seems to stop holding more
pastel.

I had a happy accident when I sprayed the piece near
the end with Sennelier Fixatif Latour for pastel. It is
not an aerosol, but rather comes in a plastic pump
bottle, and sometimes spits out little circular dots
of fixative. This happened on the pewter goblet,
making just the right kind of texture for that object!