My few summer plein-air pastels

   I have 5 pastels I completed over the summer and would like to post them with a few comments.  Each one has been a fact searching project.  Always have had a difficult times with trees and getting them to set in my paintings as they should to express the feeling I was trying for.  We all love trees, and they should be as you want them to be.  And sometimes they are just in the background, and still should appear natural.  Color for them is hard, so much green!  And ruggedness, and tangly, and so on - -largeness is a big problem.  Well, it all is, but a great journey.

   

So here is an assortment of trees in different places done over the summer.  That is Wolf creek meadow, the forth one down.  I love this place, so many trails come out of this area along to the east where the Carson river runs.  The little pinion tree is near my house,  and the bright one with the willows is actually a lake!   Its so dry here, and the lakes are very low as it was done in Sept. on an outing with the Reno Tahoe Plein air painters at Silver lake.  

It was  a great summer with experiments made into Plein-air painting but still I should of worked much harder!  I did reduce the colors in my small double sketch box made by Heilman, and put in many greys and neutrals, and still got plenty of color!  The one done at Silver lake was mid-morning, and on a reclaimed piece of Uart with a orange-red wash of acrylic paint which helped brighten it a lot.  I do use watercolor under paintings as well.

Also this bear was in my yard this summer, mid-morning, and I got this picture from my kitchen window!  He was quite large but didn't stay long.

Can't wait until the snow flies, to try and paint then. Hope you are all painting!