Oh how I love Pastel!

 I had the most wonderful pastel class yesterday.  I did the painting below.  It's not a great painting, but it was great fun.  The entire thing is done with pastel strokes - no blending.  This is quite different for me as typically I blend everything on my pastels except perhaps the last final highlights.  I also started with complimentary colors - the opposite color on the color wheel - which is what gives it the feeling of vibrancy that it has.  For instance, you can see in the sky which is violet that beneath it are the remains of the color I started with - bright yellow.  The trees started out red.  It was great fun experimenting and watching it evolve.

This next picture I did today.  It is from a photograph I took on a jeeping trip on Imogene Pass which goes between Telluride and Ouray Colorado.  It is an amazing trip anytime we do it, but this particular day it was very foggy which made it a bit dangerous.  This picture was taken near the bottom where we finally felt we could relax.  The trip was great fun and so was painting this picture.