Have You Ever Tried Painting on Sandpaper?

Wild Passions 9x11 Pastel available $95.00

This week has been a whirlwind of art activity in this house.  Along with trying to reach my goal for the poppy paintings, I've also been working on things in an attempt to get accepted into the Working Artists Forum group.  On Monday, I will need to submit 3 paintings and 1 drawing, framed, to be judged by a panel, and they will decide if they think my work is up to the standards of the group.  I am so grateful for all of you that "like" the paintings on Facebook and Instagram because that's how I chose the paintings for consideration.  I also met with my pastel mentor Katie yesterday, and along with her husband, who is also an artist, they helped me pick the best 3 of the 9 top "liked" paintings by all of you. So thank you for all your support and wish me luck.  I'll post the paintings that were picked after I get them framed.

I've been sharing a poem 1 paragraph at a time along with a poppy painting to go along with it, so I'd like to share the next paragraph to that poem:


There is a sadness everywhere present
but impossible to point to, a sadness that hides in the world
and lingers. You look for it because it is everywhere.
When you give up, it haunts your dreams
with black pepper and blood and when you wake
you don’t know where you are.

But then you see the poppies, a disheveled stand of them.
And the sun shining down like God, loving all of us equally,
mountain and valley, plant, animal, human, and therefore
shouldn’t we love all things equally back?
And then you see the clouds.

The poppies are wild, they are only beautiful and tall
so long as you do not cut them,
they are like the feral cat who purrs and rubs against your leg
but will scratch you if you touch back.
Love is letting the world be half-tamed.
That’s how the rain comes, softly and attentively, then

with unstoppable force. If you
stare upwards as it falls, you will see
they are falling sparks that light nothing only because
the ground interrupts them. You can hear the way they’d burn,
the smoldering sound they make falling into the grass.
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The poppy painting posted for today was painted on black sandpaper.  I've been trying out different grits of sandpaper to see what kind of textures I can achieve - but just a warning if you decide to try this - you will not have a pastel left when using them on the heavier grit paper - I liked the texture, but did not like using up an entire pastel after a couple of swipes, so I trashed that painting - and began again for the painting shown above.