A Rose of Friendship ~ original pastel painting

I had something wonderful happen yesterday when I was photographing this painting.  I took it outside to get the best light, and propped it up on the windowsill.  While I was taking the photos, I heard a hummingbird behind me.  I turned to look at him, and he flew up closer and hovered in front of my painting!  He obviously liked the bright colors, but it made me really happy that it caught his attention, and he looked just like an appreciative art lover at a gallery.  I wish that I would have had the presence of mind to get a photo before he flew away!

This painting was made in honor of my friend +Bruni Steinberger in Germany.  Bruni has been such a great friend who I was lucky to meet not long after joining Google+.  She takes wonderful photographs of the beautiful city that she lives in, and I got the reference photo for this painting from her collection of flower photos.

A Rose of Friendship, pastel on board, 8x10 inches
Available through Etsy

I did something with this painting that I haven't done in a while...  a watercolor underpainting!  I had forgotten how much fun they can be.  I like the random quality of watercolor - it sometimes makes patterns that I wouldn't have expected.  I was happy with the way that the upper right side turned out, and so I decided to leave it as it was, without any pastel.  The underpainting enables me to use a lighter hand with my pastel application, since I don't have to add as many layers in order to cover up every bit of white board that is peeking through, to get the saturated look that I like.

Here are a few progress photos:

Here is what the watercolor underpainting looked like before I started adding pastel.

I started adding the pastel, working in general from upper left to bottom right to keep my hands clean...

Thanks for looking!