Painting #331 - Dec 21 - a very productive day

I was pretty good today, I got right to the painting this morning, I started a 1/4 sheet wet in wet painting, and worked on it for quite a while, well, not enough to get it done, I'm getting quite a collection of paintings that I need to be finished, I'll try to finish them in the near future, but I knew that I wouldn't have been able to complete it, so I started another one (a different scene), that was much smaller, it is on watercolor paper though. I have been enjoying the paper again lately, not that I don't like the claybord, but I needed to change things to keep them interesting. I also worked on my portrait commission today, it's coming right along, almost finished with my nephew, now still have quite a bit to do with the newest niece, I'll get it, I really enjoyed working with the pastels again, I bought some Schminke and some Sennelier pastels a couple of months ago, love those buttery sticks, but, the downfall is that they are thick, so the detail is proving difficult to accomplish, the NuPastels that I have don't want to work together with those soft, buttery ones, I'll figure it out, just difficult.

Now, this is another winter scene, I really tried to simplify this, but found myself really getting into those branches, again, I did do pretty good with the background though, so the detail is really, mostly in the foreground, I just got my first issue of Palette Magazine, and this issue is really very interesting, it is all about flattening things out, I'm very intersted in this approach, not that I think I can do it, for some reason, I find myself loving the detail and I don't know if I can get away from that, but I'd love to try it, right now isn't the time, I have so much stuff to do to get ready for Christmas and then leaving right away to go to Minnesota, that I don't really have time to just play, so, I'm stuck in the same old way I always do things, this painting has about 2 hours in it, and I feel that's pretty good, for me at least, but I'd like to get that down to an hour for the same size, maybe even the same amount of time for the 1/4 sheet too, I'll work on it when I get back from Minnesota, so for now, I like this little painting and I hope you do too.