Robins in Autumn??

It is autumn here in Australia right now, warm and pleasant days followed by cold nights. In fact our clock went back one hour last night giving us a delicious extra hours sleep.  So why you may well ask am I drawing robins with all their winter connotations? I think it is a throw back to my recent winter holiday in Ireland where I was inspired by the sights and sounds of winter.

 I have been continuing to explore the oil pastel medium where I scratch the image onto the paper through several layers of pastel. It feels really intuitive for me to use this technique so I would like to see how far I can go with it. It is challenging to place colours where I want them to be when I scratch through the surface. It is  also challenging to have a top layer that isn't black so that is what this little experiment has been about.

 I love the velvety texture of the oil pastels which gives a mellow bloom to the surface of the paper.

Sorry that the pics are not very sharp but I photographed them rather than scanned them as I am waiting for a new scanner.