Getting to grips with a new laptop

The last few days have been a bit strange. My husband and I decided to treat ourselves to a MacBook Pro. It's great but very different to the laptop I was using before. Posting pictures, saving photos, downloading them in the first place all foreign.

Today I started to work some texture and tone into the soft pastel on my lioness painting. I'm not totally sold on the velour yet. It's very hard to retain dark areas, which get covered with pastel as it falls off the paper when you work into it. I'm keeping an open mind, as I've only played with this today for an hour.

Happy New Year!

Here's one I started in December. I had to put it down after a few hours, after receiving a last minute commission for Xmas.

I'm trying out a new surface, velour. Its got a soft feel, and the pastel glides onto it. Its a big change to my usual pastelmat paper, which is like a fine sand paper.

I'd read it gives a soft effect to the painting, so I thought this lioness would make a good subject. I think I will have to use fixative on the finished work as it seems to fall off the paper!

I have some seascapes planned next and a possible oil painting of a Richmond deer, however I've had the festive season off, and not picked up as much as a pencil, so thought this lioness would be a nice way to ease myself back into my art.