Pear Cactus Color Shift

When we painted the original pear cactus last week, since I had already done mine for the demo, I decided to do another version using a little different pallete. Still wanted to use rather pastel colors as a contradiction to the usual sea of green we see with this subject, but I wanted to bring in a bit more purple and cut back on the orange tones. This is smaller in size, and took just a bit more than an hour or so to get it done. I did start off with a wet paper and just arbitrarily threw the background colors down. This one was done with no masking, but just trying to save some of the lighter hues. To be truthful, I just forgot to do the masking so it went a bit faster and I didn't do all the busy work of the needles inside the cactus leaves.

When we painted today, I had taken some shots of my mother's paperwhites I had moved to the farm when we closed their house in Lufkin. They are so lovely this time of year. I painted them today and will try to get them posted tomorrow. Sure is pretty outside and it sure makes me want to stay outside and play in the flowerbeds rather than be inside.