Thursday, May 26, 2011

Victoria-by-theSea lighthouse

Well here I am back to lighthouses and Atlantic Canada again. This light is in the Prince Edward Island town of Victoria-by-the-Sea. It's a charming little town on the shores of the Northumberland Strait. I enjoy the shops there, and just strolling the streets with their charming homes. It's well worth a visit if you get to PEI. This was done on my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum paper. Various pastels.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Red-tailed Hawk

Another one for my bird series. It's fun being able to combine my twin passions of birding and pastel art. I was down in Newark's Branch Brook Park a month or so ago, and was at a spot where I had seen goldfinches in the past, hoping to see some again. And what happened but this gorgeous re-tailed hawk came flying in and landed on the tree right next to me. I tried to be as quiet as I could while snapping picture after picture of him. What a beauty. He was there for a few minutes until a jogger came running along the path and scared him away. The jogger, head down, just kept on moving, and never never noticed the large lordly bird he had flushed. So I decided I had to paint the hawk's portrait.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Arete

My personal life has been so busy for the last few weeks that I have been away from art for a long time. But today I stopped in to see Alex Piccirillo at his life drawing class, and he let me sit in to do a makeup for the session that got cancelled for our last class. Our model, Arete, was a lovely young woman with the classic sort of profile you might expect to see on a Grecian urn. And I loved the red of her dress! It was fun getting dusty again - although the next month or two will be so crazy I'm not sure how much I'll get to it.

I'm in the process of moving to Florida, and have an offer in on a house down there. Assuming all goes through I'll have a room in the house that can be my art studio! That's pretty exciting in and of itself. I'll have to post pictures when I get there.