May for the Spirit

It's May.  May is my birthday, my anniversary, Mother's day...  May is a pretty good time of the year for me.  It always seems to lend itself to rejuvenation.  I take breaks.  I treat myself.  I get some thanks and pampering from the family which really lifts my spirit.

With spring coming so late, the prairie crocuses are just finishing off now.  I found this beautiful faerie ring while our hiking with my youngest!

The rhubarb and strawberries are popping up.  Yesterday was so hot (almost 30C) that we headed for a warm sandy city beach and put our toes in the river.  : )

For my birthday, I took a whole weekend off and did NOTHING but play around with these long awaited soft pastels.  Kings Art in Ontario had a fantastic sale with free shipping.  These are not available locally, but as I use things up, I can add to my set from Hues or Art Placement.

120 half stick set of soft pastels

I still use my shitty cheap oil pastels for sketching in prep for yarn embroideries.  About 5 years ago I received soft pastels in pan form, but I had not touched them much at all.  I felt there was too much to learn about surfaces and fixatives.  Also, I watched my mother create soft pastel landscape art for a solid fifteen years of my life.  It was excellent training, however, I fear creating the same look as her.  I like to find my own niche. So I kept on stitching.

Meticulously creating prairies with thread - making sure each colour of thread was in just the right place for nine year now full time - that has been huge in my artistic development.  Picking up pastels is just a different medium, but still doing the same thing really.  Putting the right colour in the right place.  They upside is I get to do a bit of blending.  Oh ya, and it's FASTER.  lol  Textiles are one of  the slowest art forms on the planet.

Working with pastels is just giving me more practice.  I can create and finish and learn so much much more quickly that I feel my eye is already advancing.  I took some advice about getting more impressionistic:  work quicker, don't think about it too much.  Make it again and again and you'll just learn and progress so fast.  Sage advice.  I'm on it.

I did this little one on a 3 inch scrap

and then I did another on a 6 inch scrap of red mat board

I did those after creating two 12 inch pastel painting.  Before I left the studio, I touched up this one...

I started this at a Plein Air workshop 5 yrs ago at Wanuskewin

And then I did this on a very wide piece of grey mat.  It's based on a photo I took in Manitoba.  I love this.  I love the background.

view from an ATV as we drove through the bush along a creek

All that before noon!  Wow.  If you want to peek at more pastel paintings, you can find a new IG page (Monika_Kinner_Whalen).  My textiles continue at Monika_Kinner on IG.

trying different surfaces and different surface colours

So that is my story!  I have another medium to help me practice and explore.  I'm not selling them.  In fact, I think I will frame them and decorate my own walls with them.  I have none of my own art on display in my home.  These can be just for me and because of the simplicity compared to textile art, I don't think they will interfere with my embroidery career.  I think they will only make things better. : )