Honeysuckle Pastel Painting

Busy time for me right now,... I have much work to catch up on, so this will be short.

Over the weekend, I went camping and managed to complete a little pastel painting of honeysuckle blossoms in front of a tree trunk. I tried something new (for me) this time. I applied the pastel color directly onto acid-free mat board which had a dark blue suede finish. It was an interesting experience. The suede-like surface had a very soft feel to it. it accepted the color from the pastel stick beautifully, and the dark blue gave me a nice dark color that peeked out from behind here and there.

I'm not sure yet how I feel about the fact that it seemed hard to achieve a crisp sharp edge though. For the images in this piece, leaves, bark, honeysuckle blossoms, I don't think sharpness is necessary. I will certainly explore this more.

Image: (c) 2009 Jeanne Guerin-Daley