Newberry, San Onofre Blue, pastel
Hold love in your being and you will find a way.
One of the greatest American artists, opera singer Leontyne Price, when asked what advice you can give to a young artist replied: "Love your voice." That feeling of love has always been my primary motivation for everything art. Its the feeling guides and pushes all the hard work, explorations, and disgust with failures -- I'll go through all that just for these moments when it works and I feel unadulterated love. I am feeling that now having just finished this pastel.
The color theory for this pastel was blue atmosphere, cool yellow light, and purple darks; and cool distance and warm foreground. When put altogether the sky was double blue, its color and the cool blue distance. The foreground takes on a kind of brown-gray, blue atmosphere + beige sand + warm tones = caca. hahaha.
Art at its best is a stylized abstraction of real things. Not a catalog of details, but a statement that has a perspective, appeals to our senses, and gives us a feeling.
Hold love in your being and you will find a way.
Michael Newberry, Idyllwild, 11/6/2020