PASTEL VASE WITH FLOWERS PROCESS

 This is a 12 x 16 pastel of a vase with flowers against a busy background.  I am posting stills of my process.  I start with squinting to see the basic values and look at shapes only without deciding what they are.  This is an example of working thinking abstractly to create an illustrative painting.  I keep things general at first and then go into details.

Unfortunately I couldn't keep them in the right order so each is labeled underneath

step 1

    

step 2

final

step 4

step 3