Feature art work : Plain air Pastels of Spain

^{Thank you for the Interest}

The pastels marked as Spain in the gallery section were completed in 1990-1991 while on a six month trip to Spain. After a few weeks of arriving in Spain I purchased a couple small boxes of soft pastel (Rembrandt brand and Holbeins), plus three different sizes of water color paper and a few sketch pads. I was not planing on doing this, but I was so inspired by the landscape and the passion the people had for art, that I was compelled to join in. This was my fist time working with soft pastels, and the first time working in the public eye. I choose pastels because they do not need any drying time and they are easy to travel with. I approached them like I would oil painting, layering the pastel using a light amount of fixative between layers. The last layer I used no fixative so as not to mute the final colors. I had no reference on using pastels, I just experimented.
I still have most of the originals from that trip, and I have made reproductions for print. The original images were scanned and the color corrected in photo shop. The result is an image that is very close to the original. I explain the process in greater detail in the product section of this site.