10″x8″ pastel on sanded paper
“I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen.” -Anne Lamott
Beautiful Spring Came
12″ square pastel on sanded board
“The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.” -Harriet Ann Jacobs
Waiting in the Wings
12″x9″ pastel on sanded paper
I used the pallet I have been using to paint evening primrose flowers to paint these little dancers. I also used as few strokes as possible. I find fields of flowers are more beautiful, and interesting with less information spelled out not more, perhaps that technique will work tiny ballerinas?
Picasso’s Primrose
8″x10″ pastel on sanded paper
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” – Pablo Picasso
My impression of Evening Primrose
10″x8″ pastel on sanded paper
There is beauty all around us, often mixed up in things that are not very beautiful. I paint exactly how the flowers feel, without the power lines, or houses, or cars. As I enjoy this year’s wildflowers I remember this quote from Monet:
“Try to forget what objects you have before you – a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, ‘Here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow,’ and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives you your own impression of the scene before you.” -Claude Monet
Appreciate the beauty, ignore, or deemphasize the rest: That might be good advice to apply beyond landscape paintings.
Winter is Dead
10″x8″ pastel on sanded paper
“She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
“Winter is dead.””
-A.A.Milne
Started this painting with a beautiful underpainting to establish lights, darks, and mood.
Corner of Nature
10″x8″ pastel on sanded paper
“My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.” -Claude Monet
Rainy Day Flowers
10″x8″ pastel on sanded paper
A warm, rainy day-this is how it feels when friends get together. Friend refreshes friend then, as flowers do each others, in a spring rain. -Rumi
Twilight – a time of pause
10″x8″ pastel on sanded paper
“Twilight – a time of pause when nature changes her guard. All living things would fade and die from too much light or too much dark, if twilight were not.” -Howard Thurman
Presently Blooming
10″x8″ pastel on sanded paper
“Like wildflowers you must allow yourself to grow in all the places people thought you never would.” -Lorde
paintandsimple 