This year's red pastel painting

Hibiscus Tea, pastel on board, 19 x 22

My garden in autumn gets very red.  There is raspberry, tomato, magenta, salmon, fuscia, rosehip, hibiscus…you get the idea.  So when I pick bouquets, inevitably it's difficult to work around red and pink. I arranged this still life a week ago but hadn't had time to draw it until today. Yesterday, hoping I would have time, I re-picked the bouquet. I have been looking at it all week, longingly. 

At the start of drawing ( I spent about six hours on it) it felt impossible to use the colours I saw to describe what I saw.  They were too intense, too overpowering. As I perservered and found the correct value, pattern and form the drawing needed it got more peaceful, that was my objective… to reflect back the joy and elegance of an autumnal corner of a house.

Inspired by Objects and Garden

Partisan Day, pastel on board, 27 x 27 cm

I've been drawing in pastel regularly over the past few weeks, taking inspiration from the objects I find and what is growing in the garden. I have tried new corners of the studio to set things up and although I intend not to use flowers in every drawing it turns out they are w ay for me to put colours together that make sense that it's hard to do any other way.  There's also the thing of not wanting the flowers to die before I have captured them.

The image above began as a matching exercise: I decided I was going to begin with Matisse's colour scheme, colours I might not gravitate to myself. 

Henri Matisse, The Piano Lesson

I moved around looking for objects and colour to compose something that would have my sensibility and evoke the Matisse. 

Cold Incessant Rain, pastel on board, 27 x 27 cm

Wednesday Carboot, pastel on paper, 17 x 18 cm

Tangerine Zinnia and Tie, pastel on paper, 16 x 16 cm