Grateful Notices: Blue and Green Progressions, pastel on sanded paper, 22 5/8 X 30 3/4 inches

Blue and Green Progressions
 Pastel on sanded paper, 22 5/8 X 30 3/4 inches    Sold, private collection

Forests are extremely complex settings for making artworks. For this pastel, I opted to use a sparse group of trees in the foreground and back it with a virtual wall of color. It's a setting I often use and the possibilities in this wood are infinite.

The list of creative possibilities is large and there are options within each one: light, color, composition, contrast and more. It was a pleasure to explore them all, layering one idea over another, moving forward, backing up, and watching it all come together, bit by bit. These were not the colors I had originally intended, but the forest had it's own ideas.

My time in this wood was a pleasurable one.

New Work: Blue Wish, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

Ken Elliott Blue Wish oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches  $5100 framed

This is truly an oil that painted itself. Last week I was out in a Colorado park with friends and I got a number of useful photos. This image is a pure fantasy, a tiny fragment from a larger photo of the sun setting over the ridge that day.

There isn't a single color or shape that is native to the photo and just as well. Once I began laying out the basic design, I kept to 2-3 blues and purples. Next, the faint, setting sun had to go in and that's when things really got interesting. 

Up to that point, this was a monochromatic winter scene but when the warmer tones of the sun appeared, it prompted the use of pinks, rust and grey-green. Everything began to fall into place from there. It was very tempting to continue to 'polish' it up a bit, but I was very happy with the rougher look and open brushwork.

New Work: Just After the Sun Has Set, oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches

Just After the Sun Has Set
Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches $5100 framed
Saks Galleries, Denver

This is a scene from Castle Rock, CO near where I lived until recently. There were so many good sunsets looking west and I painted a good number of them. For this oil, the focus was split between the sky and land forms below.

Rather than focusing all of the color in the sky, I saturated the bottom half of the painting with the purples, reds, mauves and greens. The dark trees on the right set up a soft contrast as well as a border between the foreground and all that happens beyond,

It has a soft richness that I like. The water on the left was added last to create even more light effects, an improvement over the actual highway there.