Working on Rtistx Board

Rtistx company sent me a few of their different boards to experiment with so I pulled one from the pile and started a colored pencil piece. Its actually the RTX280 board for pastel but is accepting the pencil very well. I usually don't use black colored pencil, but I decided to begin with a black underpainting by varying the pressure of the strokes to create different shades of black values. I'm working the cherries from dark to light and using a variety of different brands of colored pencils including a small set of Caran d'Arche Luminance 6901 that I picked up in Italy. I am selecting colors and brands according to colorfastness and all of the different pencils are working just fine. This board can hold a quite a few layers.

Images of Tuscany

Poppies, rainy Assisi, Sienna's Il Campo main square, Tuscan landscape and Roberto, our waiter and new friend, with a classic Italian profile!

Painting in Italy

The top photo is of Richard McKinley beginning his pastel with watercolor underpainting. The middle photo is my painting in progress of the Cortona rooftops. The bottom photo is of Judy, Denise and Linda painting and Cortona countryside and duomo.

My Trip to Italy

I just returned from a wonderful, but rainy, 12-day artist workshop trip to Italy's region of Tuscany. Our instructor is well-known pastelist and oil painter, Richard McKinley and the group of artists is from all over the US as well as one from Australia. We stayed in the medieval walled city of Cortona, which is also famous because this is the town where Frances Mayes' "Under the Tuscan Sun" home is located.

Cortona, with its steep streets and little shops & cafes, is charming and we were really immersed in it's flavor and the people by the time we left (the three pictures are of Cortona from the surrounding countryside). We also visited and painted or sketched in the nearby towns of Sienna, Assisi, Bagno Vignoni and the vineyard town Montalcino. Despite the rain every day (who would have thought?), the mixture of rain, clouds and some sun gave us dramatic landscapes to paint and photo. I'd like to share some of my photos.