This pastel painting I did some years ago. I just picked some wild ivy in my garden which I have lots of and put the branches into my old brown jug. Wild ivy can be very decorative, weed or not.

Then I grabbed some pale grey-green Ingres paper and started drawing the main structure, e.g. the leaves. This gives me an idea on how to distribute the items on the A3 paper.

The next step was to colour in the shapes. Sometimes I think of painting by numbers when I do it this way. Create some shapes and fill them in. Here, I used blues and greens and a bit of white because just green is a bit boring. In places it is not coloured in. Here, the colour of the paper takes over. What stands out are the purple berries on the orangey background and the yellow twigs in between the dark blue and green leaves.

I placed the still life on a round table and drew some light and shadows in pale and dark blue on it.

The whole scene is in a bright loft room. Some slim-line wooden beams are visible. This gives the branches a room and some space.

Lots of blues and greens make this a calming and restful scene.

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