Well, I bought more pottery!

Yep, you guessed it. It was windy again. Can't paint and hold your hat on at the same time. So I bought more pottery and set up my mini shells found on the (mini) beach here in Cancun on hotel row. Added a wine from the mini bar and sat inside this morning. I tried a little tool Terry Ludwig gave us students last year at Kim Lordier's workshop. Terry gave us little pieces of pipe insulation (the closed foam grey stuff you wrap around pipes to prevent them from freezing) for a blending tool. Some of the folks there wanted very much to blend with their fingers, but with the sanded paper required to take the course, they were tearing their fingers up. Terry, by the way, makes his own pastels by hand and sells them. http://www:terryludwig.com is his website if you are interested. He was there giving us samples!!!! Very nice! I really like them a lot. Anyway, back to the tool. This is more of that Canson paper that doesn't hold much pastel. So, I thought I'd do a painting kinda "charcoal drawing" style. It was fun to try it with a still life. I admire the master pastellists of today that do magnificent life-like porcelain and shiny pots in their still-life paintings. I think I got a little bit of a feel for it using this blending tool. Thanks Terry!