I’ve been reading a lot about perspective lately on other peoples blogs and wasn’t sure if I was quite “getting” what they were saying. With my florals, perspective is totally different than with my landscapes. I get it now. I was doing a small (5×7) pastel landscape to work out the details like values and composition. Well, of course perspective plays into this. I did a preliminary sketch and seemed to have it right. But, when I then went to sketch it on the pastelbord(I never trace my drawings, maybe I should start doing this), I thought I had it right. Well, I guess I knew it was different than my sketch in my sketchbook, but I didn’t realize how this would affect the whole painting. This painting involves concrete stairs and an iron bridge. Not easy for me. I’m not a mathematician, and so I usually guesstimate on the perspective and let me tell you, this is not such a good thing when you are dealing with stairs and bridges. I really hate to have to measure things out and get it wrong even when doing so, thus the whole guessing thing. I drew the main parts of the painting on this pastelbord and didn’t notice at this time how wrong it looked.  I had to mostly have it finished before I saw that it was all wrong. Funny how that is. I am glad I did it on a small piece of pastelbord. I ended up having to wash out the whole thing. I had already washed out several parts of this painting and had to re do them. Well, now the board is sitting with an abstract under-painting, as the whole thing didn’t quite wash off. I may tackle this project again, but for now it is shelved. I think at this point it is too frustrating for me and too complicated for me to do it justice. Maybe I am wimping out. But, after working on this small painting for several days, I am already tired of it and think that I may not even do it in the future. I did learn quite a few things though, so all is not wasted. Still, it is frustrating to not have anything to show for all of my efforts.  I do know that this is all part of the process, part of the journey.  After all, i wouldn’t really be stretching and growing as an artist without failures along the way.  I am really quite proud of myself for taking up pastel in the first place.  I could have stayed with just watercolors and limited myself to just florals.  But, even though this was my comfort zone, I felt the need to expand my horizons and try new things.  I’m sure loving these pastels.

What new things have you tried lately?