color my monday

"Green Apple on Red Cloth" 

is a sketch for a previous show 

of my large (5'x8') abstracts 

using pastels on thick hot-press watercolor paper, with a ground of conté crayon. This remains one of my favorite mediums. The pastels adapt easily to the smooth paper and allow me to layer dense color and build up my abstracts. The large exhibited works were a series that incorporated apples and female nudes, taking a playful poke at art's historical predilection for the female nude as temptress. This small sketch, however, poses just the draped red studio cloth and the apple, balanced, waiting for the first fatal-attraction bite . . .