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Neo-Impressionist Landscapes

My realistic landscapes, unlike those of my uncles which were watercolors, are created in pastel pencil – colored pencil is occasionally used for small details. These all show definite Impressionist-Pointillist influence in my depiction of foreground specimen trees, middle ground woodlands and all places a vista opens to show trees receding into the distance – I spend quite a bit of time shaving the tips of these pencils to as fine a point as possible to achieve the detail I want.

These pastel drawings are relatively small- most around 7 by 10 inches – and take from two to three or more months to finish, depending on the complexity of the subject. For me this is relatively fast work – the fine lead pencil drawings take a month or two longer. The series of drawings I created for The Scales of Astraea are in pastel pencil, and quite a few of these pastel pencil drawings show the Olympic Mountains different times of day or night through the seasons – the prospect I see daily from our windows looking west. The texture I am able to achieve in forests, trees, cliffs and rocks with the grainy roughness of pastel makes the landscapes spring to life; careful use of erasers in certain areas can create effective skies and water reflections as in ‘Olympic Mountains & Puget Sound – Autumn Night’. Occasionally I will set a vase with a floral still life on a windowsill as foreground to the vista beyond; these vases are invariably drawn in folk art style – ‘Spring in Welsh Border Country with Green Pitcher of Daffodils & Pussywillows’ is an example.