Creative Tuesdays - Pastel Landscape

when I first saw this creative assignment for Creative Tuesday, I wanted to test the hypothesis that everything looks cute & cuddly when done in pastels. So I sought to draw spiders, grasshoppers and other non cuddly things to see if it held true.

However, since I'm not much of an entomologist, all my efforts were coming up subpar to say the least.

So I walked up the hill above where I live & drew this quick sketch, using oil pastels - and IN pastels - and humbly submit this to today's Creative Tuesdays. And yes - there he is, the one failed spider, in the lower right hand corner.

Visit Creative Tuesday for more creative moments - in pastel!

Jane Eyre Challenge!

Now this is really something - a Jane Eyre Challenge, from a fellow arts blogger! Lisa Richards over at Pen & Ink has posted the challenge further described

Am just going to post directly what she says so that, hopefully, when I get around to it I will do it - what excites me about it is that I read this book and also had occasiion to wonder about what these paintings might have looked like- they did show, however,that had Ms Eyre lived in this day in age she would have been Goth or Emo to the extreme

I thought it might be quite a challenge for each of us to choose a painting and paint our interpretation of what it might have looked like.

Below you will find the descriptions Jane gave of her three paintings. When you complete your painting you can come back here and attach a comment to the Jane Eyre Challenge page (the link is in my right hand column) with a link to the blog page where your painting is posted.

And now, here's the excerpt from Jane Eyre. (I hope you'll read the book if you haven't already!)

He spread the pictures before him, and again surveyed them
alternately.

While he is so occupied, I will tell you, reader, what they are:
and first, I must premise that they are nothing wonderful. The
subjects had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with
the spiritual eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were
striking; but my hand would not second my fancy, and in each case it
had wrought out but a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived. [I know exactly how she feels!] Lisa's note!

These pictures were in water-colours. The first represented clouds
low and livid, rolling over a swollen sea: all the distance was in
eclipse; so, too, was the foreground; or rather, the nearest
billows, for there was no land. One gleam of light lifted into
relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and
large, with wings flecked with foam; its beak held a gold bracelet
set with gems, that I had touched with as brilliant tints as my
palette could yield, and as glittering distinctness as my pencil
could impart. Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corpse
glanced through the green water; a fair arm was the only limb
clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or torn.

The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak of a
hill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze. Beyond
and above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight:
rising into the sky was a woman's shape to the bust, portrayed in
tints as dusk and soft as I could combine. The dim forehead was
crowned with a star; the lineaments below were seen as through the
suffusion of vapour; the eyes shone dark and wild; the hair streamed
shadowy, like a beamless cloud torn by storm or by electric travail.
On the neck lay a pale reflection like moonlight; the same faint
lustre touched the train of thin clouds from which rose and bowed
this vision of the Evening Star.

The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter
sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close
serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in
the foreground, a head,--a colossal head, inclined towards the
iceberg, and resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the
forehead, and supporting it, drew up before the lower features a
sable veil, a brow quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye
hollow and fixed, blank of meaning but for the glassiness of
despair, alone were visible. Above the temples, amidst wreathed
turban folds of black drapery, vague in its character and
consistency as cloud, gleamed a ring of white flame, gemmed with
sparkles of a more lurid tinge. This pale crescent was "the
likeness of a kingly crown;" what it diademed was "the shape which
shape had none."

"Were you happy when you painted these pictures?" asked Mr.
Rochester presently.

"I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in
short, was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known."

I will look forward to being surprised by some unexpected entries in this challenge, long after I've forgotten I put it on my blog, lol! I'm going to have to look up images for the Eastern Star and cormorants and such. The one with the iceberg, I'm not sure I understand at all. It will make for some interesting research! :)

So-- there it is.