Work in Progress...Harbor Island Marsh

In between my daily paintings, I like to work on something larger. I will be bringing this to pastel class tonight. It's a marsh scene from my trip to the South Carolina Low Country. For these bigger paintings I like to put in some advance planning. I first did a value sketch which is business card size. Then I did a small color practice painting on a 2x3 card. You can see both of these studies taped above my painting. The reference photo is on the left. Then I lightly sketched the main elements and blocked in these areas with hard pastels. I rubbed the pastel in with a piece of foam creating my underpainting. I'll work on this more tonight.
Fun news....I placed an order for about 60 Girault pastels. I was tempted to get the full set but when I went over the list...I actually had about half of them already from the various sets I had purchased!