Photographing Pastel Paintings

I am getting a little frustrated trying to find the time to get some of the pastels I've been doing over the past few months photographed. Equally frustrating is trying to find the time to find the tripod I haven't seen in a year. I was on a roll with these for a while, before getting bogged down by work and distracted by experimenting with block printing, sometime the subject of its own post. I cranked out about 7 or 8 along the same lines as those I've pictured above.

Fortunately, or not, I've kind of lost interest in painting landscapes lately and have become turned on by just color and texture. Somehow, though, they kind of end up looking like something that resembles part of a site plan. I haven't decided if that's a good or bad thing yet, but if I want to get them onto my much neglected and disorganized Flickr account, I must like them. I guess since I took the time to hang them on a wall instead of stacking them with the ever growing piles of ideas and unfinished paintings that ended up forgotten, I like them a lot.

Magnolia X soulangeana

I'm not sure just what it is about this picture, because the composition kind of bites, but there's something about the light that really does it for me. I took it on the kind of day where the sun is just about to go down and the sky is dark and gray, right when the clouds part and suddenly everything the light hits has an orange glow. Just about at the perfect time. Maybe it is because there's so much light going through the petals... it almost seems like there are two light sources.

I have always called these tulip trees, but now that it has leafed out I took a look at the leaves and they aren't the right shape, so I figured it must be a magnolia. Surprisingly, after looking it up it is commonly known as a tulip magnolia, so I guess I wasn't all that wrong.

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Alchemilla vulgaris

The Lady's Mantle is about to come into full bloom. If I were ranking plants, this one would be close to the top of the list. I'm not sure exactly why that is. It could have a lot to do with the color, which is just about the perfect foil to the Japanese Maples. The flowers themselves are unspectacular, almost bordering on ugly, but their chartreuse color combined with the soft, blue green tint of the foliage in the shadows makes me go mmmmmm. Equally mmmmmm inducing is the unparalleled way water droplets collect on the hairy leaves. AND!!! They are self-sowing. Finally. Six years = about freakin' time.

This, I think, is the beginning of the week or so when the garden is at its best, before the dreaded Stella d'Oros become my nemesis. Oh, how I hate those f*$%@#s. They have their virtues... the grassy foliage is among my favorite, but the color of the flowers is lame. Some day they will all end up on the compost heap. Or exiled across the bridge to the back backyard. Or with their stems cut off right before their fleshy, make-me-want-to-puke-orange, in need of daily deadheading flowers begin to open, turning my garden into something that resembles the entrance landscaping of a Shell station.

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Obama - 75,000 in Portland

Awesome.

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