Garden of Poppies

[ESda]

Hi!
This is a 1st pastel for me. Usually I paint in water color but decided to try a different medium. What I need are critiques..Am I in the right direction should I do more with this? If so, what? The painting is from a photo I got here in the image library.

Below is the photo. I removed most of the background trees except for one.


Peggy

[Kathryn Wilson]

Hi: Welcome to the Pastel Forum and for a first post, this is looking good. Might I ask what pastels you are using and what paper?? Working on white paper is difficult, because you have to fill in so much - using a colored pastel paper with a pumice base will help you loads.

With your experience being in watercolor, you are going to have to turn your thinking around and work from dark to light in your paintings - you might consider using a watercolor as an underpainting, then work some pastels on top.

The sky looks really good and the those poppies to the right really pop off the paper.