Taking a rest

Really good painting of the buttterfly - strong colour ....and you have so much variety in your gallery Cheryl, very versatile.

Thanks for your nice comment on Proud Tulips - In answer to your questions and comments I've been painting about 6 or 7 years, tried watercolour first for 3 years which I found a bit frustrating and I threw away a lot of spoiled paintings. Then I tried oils and love them - very versatile and when it goes wrong I just paint over it when it's dry. I started with a lot of drawing and detail several years ago and gradually I'm trying to "abstract" the image a bit. I paint as a hobby but I do exhibit a few and sell reasonably well - it's a way of paying for the materials. Sometimes I paint over canvases if I'm not keen on the painting. I tend to paint what I like to paint - trees, landscape, seascape - not what will possibly sell. I do like to keep trying new ideas and I think I 've got better. One thing I do occasionally is to paint the same painting again - and the second effort is usually much better than the first because you know how you can improve it. It's like learning to drive a car, I do a few things more easily and quickly now! Just keep painting!

Hi Cheryl, great to hear from you I your comment on my Pastel horse, to be honest I have never tried water with the intense pencils, these days I am into details with my pet portraits, I like to try to get some the fine hair details into the coats of the animals I am drawing, so I use pastel pads, u know the sheets of pastel paper fixed together in a pad, I did some of the fancier papers, like pastel mat and a couple of pieces of velvety surfaced paper, but I have only so far tried one of the velvet ones, and I didn't like it because it stopped me from laying down the fine details, one of my biggest problems these days has been getting fine enough points on the pastel pencils, I have a derwent pastel pencil sharpener, but that does not even work with some of my pastel pencils it just breaks them every time, depends on the type of pastel pencils I think, so I am stuck with a sharp knife my husband uses with the building of his model remote controlled planes, but even using that is tricky and by the time I have a fine enough point on just one of my pastel pencils my hand is aching from the effort! I have obviously realised that how fine the detail is in a pastel portrait is directly linked to how fine the pastel paper is, so, have ou used water with your intense pencils? I only used then for dark highlights, I found early on that once intense pencil is used nothing, absolutely nothing, is going to adhere to that surface afterwards, so intense use in my pastel pet portraits has to be accurate, well I have rambled on for long enough now, so bye Cheryl, happy painting,ps as I am typing this it is to a background hum from the top road which is the direct road o and from the Heysham to the Isle of Man roro ferries, and the TT motorbike races are on at the moment, so everytime a ferry docks it is full of all shapes and sizes of motorbikes that all roll off the ferry and stream along that top road,then when thy have all gone peace and quiet descends again! Bye for now xx