"Tiffany Stained Glass Peacock"

I have always loved to look at stained glass; it's translucense and "rich" look and feel are so appealing to me. Many of the old Victorian style houses I've visited (and I have visited many) have stained glass built into them somewhere.....

Soft pastels (my new favorite medium) are wonderful because they feel bright and "creamy" when I pull them across fine-grit sandpaper. The combination is irresistible to me. While gazing at this image (from a miniature calendar one of my customers gave to me for a job well done) trying to get inspired, it occurred to me that pastels might be a wonderful medium for depicting the colorful, marbelized look of stained glass. I thought - try it!

There are things about the composition that made depicting it an absolute challenge for me. i.e. lots of detail, the attempt at translucence, and the peacock. (I usually do a poor job of drawing/painting birds or creatures of any kind....)

Looking at it now the many colors of the finished project lean it toward "gaudy", but there are areas of it that I like! For example, the colors on the peacock's neck , the peacock itself, and the sailboats worked out nicely. However, as a whole...I think the composition is too busy......

Oh, well. Back to the drawing board !

What do you think? I'd live to hear your comments....good and bad...Thank you !

"The Mittens (Utah) at Sunset"

As much as I love trees I'm bored with them as subject matter for my landscape paintings. I was leafing thru a "coffee table picture book" this past weekend, and I came across this image.

Although the pallette is limited, I found it more difficult to depict that I had originally imagined. I found the transition from dark to light/and light to dark to be extremely difficult to execute, but in the end I think it's a decent effort. Again, I tried to complete the painting in under and hour; this one took me just over that much time; it took an hour and twenty minutes......

I hope you like it....