A Pastel Journey Round My Garden

Another beautiful day and even quite warm up at the back of the garden with a strengthening sun. So after a frustrating morning getting pulled this way and that, I finally managed to get myself out into the garden to do a bit of pastel painting direct from life. First up was this spray of Forsythia flowers:
Pastel on Ingres paper, 38x29cm: "Forsythia". Set against a dark background of Viburnum leaves and the branches of a leafless Rowan I sat on my little fold-away chair for ages wondering how the heck I was going to do this! Decided the best place to start was the principal subject itself - the Forsythia flower groupings on their narrow branches, then working round the flower shapes with dark undergrowth on one side and brighter on the other. It turned out better than I expected. Encouraged, I moved along to these emerging Rhubarb stalks and leaves:

Pastel on Ingres paper, 38x29cm: "Rhubarb". I have been watching these leaves develop over the last few days and it seems like you can actually see them grow by the minute! I wanted to treat this as fairly abstract, which I hope I have achieved. Note the two little bulbous growths centre left which I believe are flower buds. These little chappies will sadly have to get cut off before too long otherwise I will not get enough stalks for my favourite annual crumble! Moving right along I come to this clump of Daffodils which are now going over:
Pastel on Ingres Paper, 38x29cm: "Last of the Daffodils". Yet another subject I had no idea how to approach, so just sat for a while drawing them in my head before plunging in. I wanted to get the sense of all the stalks falling down, like cascading water, after standing to attention for the past 5 or 6 weeks and some of the flower heads begining to look tatty. Who knows if I captured that, but still content with the finished image. Wolf Khan I'm not, but then he is not me either!