Workshop - Day One - Faith Valley

Hello from the Sierras!  We are up here taking a workshop from Richard McKinley.  Our base camp is the cabin in Hope Valley, California, where we started on Monday with a talk and hand-outs and plan of the week.  Then we went out to our first location at Faith Valley (the next alpine valley up the road), where Richard demoed value sketches and then a field study on a small belgium mist kitty wallis piece.  He gave us all a piece of red acetate that we could put behind a view finder or use alone when we determine values. 

The first picture above is Richards completed field study.  Below is the series of mine - first blocking in the value shapes (in the basic color scheme), then we were to smoosh it and push the pastel into the paper with a piece of foam (pipe insulation).

Next step - definining with additiona layers of pastel.  When he came around to mine I got the pointer that I should join my darks into larger, simpler shapes because my little strokes (though consistent and impressionistic) made the darks fragmented.  I did the correction here, but tentatively.  Hope it is enough.

Oops - blogger photo upload stopped loading pictures.  In case I loose this entry, I will post this now, go down to breakfast, and try to do the end of my post then...