Bob Palmerton 

I have gathered a bunch of material from a trip to Washington state, which will form my new "PNW" series of paintings. Out family hiked in the Olympic National Forest as well as in the Cascades east of Bellingham, WA. What a great trip! Below are two small pastels. The first pastel, 10x7 inches, was inspired by a hike through the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park. I had previously thought that a rainforest was a tropical phenomenon, but now I know there are "temperat

While working on another large 21x27 pastel painting, I thought I would break up my schedule with a small study. At the same time, I wanted the painting to be simple. A composition based on a series of diagonal lines, comprising mountains, fields, tree lines and grassy areas. Cade's Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains provides the backdrop of this 5x7-size pastel painting: What particularly impresses me about this vista (and many in that area in early April) is the bold color

Working on the Teton painting. Here is the initial version following creation of the underpainting and initial application of pastel: In this modification, I have restructured the tall tree on the right to accurately reflect the gaps between the branches, as there was a variety of differently-shaped evergreens depending on their growth environments. I did the same on the large tree to its right, and a few others. I also added warmer mid-value greens to build depth in the tre

See the color in the photo below; this photo was digitally enhanced as best as I could using Microsoft Office. In fact, without adjusting the color saturation, the sky was a flat white, showing no clouds or the deeper blue you see here. As I focus in on portions of the photo on my laptop, additional colors become pronounced, such as the pinkish hue in the distant mountains. Here is the work-in-progress version of the pastel painting, started in class at the Michigan Art Cen