Sketch for Night Scene at Woodstock Park

First sketch for WNS

I started this sketch weeks ago after I posted the night scene reference photo.  I thought I should post it because I've found that action can give me a little kick start. I used my daughters Oil pastels for this.  I found them to be cumbersome to work with because I have trouble blending them.  I know I'm not using the right paper or technique, but I much prefer traditional pastels.  I plan to pick some up this weekend.  I don't know what happened to the huge stash of pastels I had years ago.I used to keep them in a little brief case.  Must have been tossed out when we moved.  That surprises me because I hate throwing out art supplies more than I hate throwing out old shoes. One might think I grew up in the depression era the way I save old crap....but I digress.

Ongoing Struggle

This has begun to resemble a self portrait.

I'm still struggling to get this current project done.  It has hampered my ability to paint freely because of the time constraints.  The timing of this project was unfortunate, because my schedule had changed and I got very busy.  Add to the fact that I haven't done a commission in a very long time and, well...  maybe the expression of angst in this attempt is a reflection of my own in getting this finished.  It was supposed to be a smile. Oh, and not to mention I thought I had it nailed down awhile ago and had to completely retool.  I keep coming back to certain images no matter how I try.

Old Cartoons from 2009

One thing I don't like about the Templates, is that I cant find a way to write above the photos I have already posted unless there is type in place, so it ends up as a caption like this comment here which ends up looking unbalanced....

   I'm still working on the commission, so here are some old caricatures from 2009. 

Remnants of the Past.

I couldn't stand to see that last post on my blog anymore.  It reminds me too much of how little I've done lately. so here's something else to look at......This is the only thing left of this painting.  All of the pictures on my computer were deleted when it crashed.  That didn't really bother me too much though. I have some online and backed others up before the crash.  This painting was cut up to use for a gift tag I believe.  Kind of a cliche painting, in fact a sample photo that comes with Windows looks a lot like this.  I've been struggling to make time to paint, but mostly because I am back to my procrastinating ways and it has caught up to me.  Should have more time once the taxes are done.