My first pastel

This pasted I finished about a month ago. It took me like 3 weeks to do. This was the most frustrating piece I have ever worked on. It is a very poor copy of a Monet painting of chrysanthemums. I like the vase and the table though. I don't know why I attempted this, but in the end I think the colors are pretty together. Please tell me what you think. Thanks!!!!

Also, this is on Strathmore 25"x19" paper. It is so toothy. That was part of why it took so long to finish, I had to keep filling in the black spots on the paper with the pastel. In the end there are still some spots and it is very distracting. I just couldn't work on it anymore.

[duey]

Really great job on this. I know what you mean about the black spots (or white spots if you are working on white paper). I had that problem too and it was very frusterating. But you need a toothy paper for pastel and I don't think there is any avoiding it. It you blend the pastel it makes it less obvious though. I like this alot though, nice job.

Thank you Duey, I think my next pastel will be a bit less ambitious though! Maybe I won't get so frustrated! And for some reason I did this on purple paper. Crazy huh!!!

Am not really a fan of Monet...but i think this is really good.
Keep it up.

My parents had a Norman Rockwell book that I used to look at all the time when I was young - I quite like his work !
My parents also had a couple of prints by the Canadian naturalist painter whom I admire as well.

This is the limit of my artistic knowledge .