7-11-09-4

I cannot tell you how long this piece in its monoprint stage has hung on my studio wall while I got up the courage to attack it with pastel. It was a seriously courageous monoprint, largely prepared with palette knife. How to add the softness of pastel to the hardness of that palette knife surface, was the dilemma I had given myself. So today was the day, and uncharacteristically, I went into it expecting defeat. Wrong again! I went into it totally as a colorist, which can be either a route through, or a muddy disaster. Mercifully, the piece practically finished itself.