I hope that you are feeling good about your summer so far and if you are still feeling some stress, please take some time to day dream and get away from it even if it is just for fifteen minutes a day!
Someone recently told me that they cannot tell the difference between the pastels and oils from the images on this website as I have them all grouped together but I am glad because I have always considered the two mediums to be equal in every way. It is only when they are framed and you see the glass over the pastels that you can make a clear distinction.
I am in the planning stages of a pastel painting workshop in November so I have been painting with pastels some still life settings. (go to The Art Sanctuary Home to sign up for the workshop). It has been too hot to paint outside anyway. I have been buying some Indiana peaches at a farmers market and setting them up to paint from and then eating that delicious fruit of summer.
I have just added images of those paintings on the website for you to enjoy and comment on as you wish.
Thank you !
Donna

Back to the beginning - Twilight barn is the first of several paintings returning to the pastel medium. The twilight hour is so special to us because it is so fleeting. You blink an eye and it is gone.
I tried some new Wallis sanded paper in the belgian mist color instead of white and I am enjoying it immensely. It sounds like a grey color but is more khaki color instead. This should keep me busy for a while.  I feel a still life in the making.
Donna

In February the Indiana Association of Plein Air Painters were allowed to paint inside the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. It was a wonderful day spent perfecting our skills by copying works of the masters in the American West Gallery and Gund Gallery of Western Art.  We could also choose to paint a live model decked out in western wear. It was really hard to decide because we were only going to be there for 5 hours. I skipped the model and headed to one of my favorite oil paintings by Bert Geer Phillips (1868-1956). As you can see from the photograph, I instinctively stood the same way as the young man in the painting.  He is holding a musical instrument and I am holding a brush!  I wonder how the painting I did would have turned out if I had stood in front of the original by Mr. Phillips in the opposite direction. I have painted many figures from life under artificial lighting but not many from natural outdoor lighting so this was a learning experience from a "master". Many people commented that my version did not look exactly like the original so I just told them it was the young man's brother I was painting. (insert laugh track here).
 Many thanks to the Eiteljorg and Staff for giving us this experience. We were very careful to not get any of our paint where it did not belong!

I love to walk around the neighborhood and I am not a slow walker, just ask my family. This last November I fractured a bone in my foot and had to wear a cast then a boot brace and now high top hiking boots.  That really slowed my pace down!  On the good side, I found that I took more time to notice things along the way.  You know that phrase- take time to stop and smell the roses. Or paint the roses. (I just recently sold a painting of a rose bud. I love it when things intertwine like that).
Now back to the subject of feet and shoes. When I had the cast on I would get up in the morning, look in my closet and pick out my clothing for the day - sweatshirt, big leg sweatpants, one shoe and one sock. My grandson left his little high top converse shoes here one day and they looked like him with the disheveled shoe laces and one foot pointing to the side a little bit and I decided to paint a picture of them almost like a portrait. I thought it turned out really nice and I wanted to do another one.  I found some little girls patent leather mary janes and set them up to paint too.  I pointed the toes toward each other a little like my granddaughter used to do when she was younger. So then I painted another shoe "portrait". It sounds like I was a little obsessed with shoes but I think because I took more time to notice things I found some new inspiration.
Thanks for reading this and hope you enjoy looking at the shoe "portrait".  There are several other images of these shoe portraits under the Paintings" category of my website. If you would like me to paint some shoe portraits of your own selected shoes I would be happy to do that. Just e mail me for pricing.
Donna