Rum River, pastel, 16x20

Many of my pastel pieces begin as demos for my classes.  Since I've had a little break from teaching over the holidays, I was able to work on this one without needing to have a specific plan for it and simply let the painting go wherever it pleased. My only goal was to stop before I got too fussy with details.



Gull Lake, Snow Covered, oil, 8 x 10

I started this painting on location, standing on Gull Lake in Minnesota (it was mostly frozen), but finished it today back home in the studio.  So I guess you could call it my first completed painting of 2012!

Little Tennessee River, oil, 11 x 14

I started this painting on location during a plein air weekend in North Carolina a couple of months ago and just finished it up in the studio.  Now to get going on Christmas shopping, cookie baking and gift wrapping...yikes, only one more week left!

Barn on the Hill, oil, 11 x 14

This was started on location and finished in the studio.  I played around some with the palette knife, which I don't typically do, but I wanted to try something different and experiment with creating texture.

November Afternoon, oil, 6 x 8

This is another plein air painting from a couple of weeks ago that I touched up in the studio today.

Late Autumn Marsh, oil, 8 x 10

This morning in my studio I touched up one of my plein air paintings I did in Minnesota a couple of weeks ago.  Brightened the blue in the water and fine-tuned the trees and a few other areas.  This is the completed version.

Off in the Distance, pastel, 9 x 12

Early Morning Reflections, pastel, 20 x 30

I'm very excited to announce that I had these two paintings accepted into the IAPS 2011 Web Show.  The show will be posted within a couple of weeks at http://www.pastelinternational.com/.



Unfrozen Creek, pastel, 11 x 14

 In my weekly classes at my studio, we just completed the last week of our winter landscape series.  Working from a reference photo that had very little definition in the snow, and a large mass of spindly stick trees, this was the most challenging week of our series.  This is my demo from Wednesday's class.