This is soft pastels on black sanded paper, 9x12.
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wow! That is such an expressive piece. Peaceful but moody at the same time! Love it
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The water is lovely, and the sun peeking back there! Great work!
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Fabulous work. Love it.
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absolutely stunning. Just beautiful 
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Looks great! I like the reflections, not overdone and gentle relaxed feeling to the piece.
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Ginny, I love this so much! The colors in the sky are amazing. You really captured the mood of the setting! Awesome work! Thanks for sharing.
Brenda
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Thanks, everyone. I love this one so much I am afraid to do another one. LOL! I’m afraid I won’t do another good one. 
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That “what next” lock up happens to me a lot. I often will use cheap watercolor paper instead of the 100% cotton options because I don’t want to “waste” the nice stuff until I’ve practiced the same subject a few times before having confidence to actually use a surface that would have made a good outcome easier right away. Also deciding if a topic is “worthy” of a good piece of paper which I try to save for things I’d frame instead of ignore after taping in sketch book.
I can see that mindset happening a lot with sanded paper, I thought cotton watercolor paper was spendy!
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Thanks, Other Guy. Actually, I found a way to make my own sanded paper: I have a stack of mat board that I got when an art supply store was going out of business. I cut it up in the sizes that I want, coat it with Liquitex clear gesso, and VOILA! My own sanded boards for cheap. You can use clear gesso on almost anything and it works great for pastel.
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Thanks for that tip! I have some transparent watercolor ground but it doesn’t leave any sort of sandy feeling, do you need to add something to the gesso or is clear gesso sandy rough by default?
I have been using Liquitex Matte Medium to get more layers of NuPastel down on regular paper and that works really good but still not as toothy as a sanded surface. That also gives me an “undo breakpoint” so I can sort of rewind to most recent matte acrylic application.
I got the acrylic matte medium Tip from one of Matt’s earlier YouTube lessons when he’s doing some trees with pastels and mentions it can be used to eek a few more layers out of a surface. I didn’t know about the clear gesso trick.
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Ginny, I know that “is there another good one in me” feeling! I’m always fearful I’ve reached the point where I won’t be able to produce another nice piece. However, since starting the courses on this website, I’m finding myself being much more confident and willing to try just about anything. (Although I may NOT try the car that comes up as the final challenge in the Realistic Pencil Drawing course; it scares me!) Once I turned out a decent charcoal drawing of a tree, I was convinced I could move on and do more challenging subjects. Keep up the good work. This landscape is really beautiful!
Brenda
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The clear gesso comes with the grit in it. Regular white gesso does not. Don’t know why.
Thank you. It appears that my angst feelings are very common among artists.
Just saw your lovely painting. Very nice effects with reflections. Don’t be afraid to try another one. The more you paint, the better you get! Sure the surfaces are really expensive these days, but you didn’t become an artist to be afraid of expressing yourself. Sometimes failed paintings look a lot better down the road.
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