Before anything else, it is worth saying that there is something slightly impossible going on in this one.
On the right, a maple in full red. Deep, slightly rusty, the colour a maple only reaches for about ten days before the whole thing lets go. On the left, a tree in pale lavender-white blossom. Those two things do not happen in the same week. They are three seasons apart.
I painted them together anyway, and I think the picture is better for it.
What is actually in it
A paved lane runs away from you and slightly uphill, the kind with a worn crown down the middle. To the left there is a low stone wall in warm browns and mauves, and above it a dark cottage with a steep gable and one small window, tucked back under the trees so you notice it second rather than first.
Between the two big trees the middle distance goes yellow and lime, and that band of light green is doing the real work. It separates the red from the lavender so neither one shouts the other down. Take it out and the painting would fight itself.
What pastel did here
The red maple is the part I would point at. Pastel red is difficult, because red pigment is strong and it will flatten into a single dull slab if you let it. The way through is to keep breaking it up, laying rust into crimson into a dark that is closer to brown, and leaving small gaps where the paper shows through cool underneath.
That is why the tree reads as thousands of leaves rather than one red shape. None of it is drawn leaf by leaf. It is colour broken enough that your eye finishes the job.
The lane surface is the opposite approach, almost all blended, so there is somewhere for the eye to rest.
Where it would live
This one wants a hallway, or the wall at the top of a staircase, or anywhere with a bit of distance to look down. The lane running away from you does not do much from two feet. From ten it opens up.
It is an 8 × 10, so it is not a statement piece over a sofa. It is the painting you pass on the way somewhere and look at anyway.
There is one original. The original is here, and the print is here if the original has gone.
More in the gallery, and if you are curious why the colour in these sits the way it does, I wrote about the medium itself last week.
— DawnE