Chincoteague #2

Chincoteague #2, 16 x 20, UART 320 mounted board

Chincoteague #2, 16 x 20, UART 320 mounted board

Charcoal lay-in with added graphite

Charcoal lay-in with added graphite

DSCN6410This is the second demo of the week, done in my studio.  It is a more detailed and quiet painting than the first and it took longer to complete.  The photo for this one was really boring!  I knew I was going to have to do something to make it more interesting. I decided initially on two things. One was to use a lot of reds and warm colors both in the underpainting and in the painting itself. The second was to add a red-winged blackbird in the reeds at lower left.

Having learned from Monday’s demo, I decided that this would be an all-hard pastel underpainting and I was quite pleased with the lovely colors!  I made an important change to the composition, by creating the triangle of water at the bottom left to help lead the eye into the picture. Otherwise, the composition is fairly close to the photo.  For the sky, I used a variety of aquas and cooler blues, then added a light green Unison and a pale red violet which warmed up the left side very nicely. For the background trees I used a combination of a deep red majenta and greens, starting fairly dark and working adding lighter greens, light cool reds, and oranges over top. I used grayed Unisons and Giraults for the background grasses and we all really liked the one piece of lighter grass that stands out near the middle of the picture in the background. Working down to the lower left grasses, I added the blackbird, but he didn’t last long!  Everyone agreed that he had to go. One person suggested putting him in the reeds above the right side, where he would have stood out more. But we decided against that as well.

For the foreground reeds, I lay in violet, reds, and oranges, then some green and used the sides of Giraults to work in the grasses, working from darker to lighter.  The last thing was to add the orange grass heads.  Following the class, I made more alterations to the background trees and changed the shape of the sand spit and water below.

I’m not sure that the photo is picking up the variety of colors in the trees and grasses. It was hard not going to the violets, but I had decided to work with a red and green palette, as much as possible and I liked the warmth that it produced.

So now, I’m going to look for perhaps yet another one from Chincoteague to work on for the upcoming Open Studios weekend at Artists and Makers. If you are in the vicinity, I hope you’ll come! March 4-5, 10-4, 12276 Wilkins Ave., studio 320.

Chincoteague #1

Chincoteague, #1, 16 x 20, UART 320 mounted board

Chincoteague, #1, 16 x 20, UART 320 mounted board

Charcoal lay-in brushed with water

Charcoal lay-in brushed with water

Underpainting with watercolor and hard pastel

Underpainting with watercolor and hard pastel

Color studies

Color studies

I did two demos this week and will be sharing them in two posts. I have no titles for these paintings yet!  So I’m calling them Chincoteague #1 and #2. If any of you have inspiration, let me know.  This one is the one I did in my Monday class. I’m sharing the initial lay-in, color studies, and the underpainting, along with the finished painting. The class focused on the decision-making process and I had a hand out with the types of decisions one makes. One of my statements was to be sure to allow the painting to speak to you during the painting process–this one did!  Several times!!!

I began with a graphite drawing and two color studies. I decided to stick with the colors that were in the photo (color study above). Then I used charcoal to draw in the basic shapes. I used water and a brush to soften and set the charcoal and while doing this, I had the idea of making this into more of a vignette and leaving the bottom left corner unfinished.  In the class, I used watercolor for the sky and for the reeds and grasses at bottom. I used hard pastel and alcohol for the trees and water. It was kind of a mish-mash! Not the most impressive underpainting I’ve ever done!!!  I proceeded in painting the background trees, and the water and grasses a upper right. Then I tried to loosely put pastel in on the bottom. Pretty quickly it became obvious to all of us that this was not going to be a vignette! So I proceeded to paint in the lower left corner and the painting had much more unity.  After bringing it to my critique group on Tues., I adjusted a sky hole and the trees at right, but left the rest as it was.

Compositionally, this is pretty close to the photo with one exception. I decided to add white egrets in the water and rising into the air against the dark background trees.  This provides for a center of interest and the bright piece of yellow green field also draws the eye to that location. My original plan had been to eliminate the green tree where the egrets are. But when I did the lay-in, I realized that I needed something there. So I drew in a rather small bush. But as the painting progressed, it turned into a tree (just as it was in the photo).  I also made a change in the color of the water. In the photo there were dark pieces that reflected the green trees above. I decided to just add violet to the water in place of the green, which helped tie the water to the red violets in the trees. I also added a more aqua color to the water in the foreground. I did the water and then added the orange grasses on over, which worked pretty well.  The painting was completed in about 2 hours and I think it has the look of a painting that could have been done on sight.  I’m happy with it now, but will welcome comments.

Reservation Beach Light

Reservation Beach Light, 16 x 12, resurfaced pastelbord

Reservation Beach Light, 16 x 12, resurfaced pastelbord

Here is another painting done on a resurfaced board. It’s from our December trip to Massachusetts.  The board was all gold and I decided that I needed to do a partial underpainting, so I used hard pastel to fill in the areas from the trees down and applied alcohol. It made it a lot easier to keep this area dark.  In the sky, I pretty much covered up the surface. But I liked working on the rough board, which made the bushes and sand in foreground quite easy to do.  I may do this larger and would make one change. There is a tree in the back between the gap in the dark trees that is about the same in size and color to the sunlit grasses just below it.  Something need to change here!  Otherwise, I was pretty happy with it.

Under a Gibbous Moon

Under a Gibbous Moon, 16" x 12" Pastelmat

Under a Gibbous Moon, 16″ x 12″ Pastelmat

I painted in the studio on Sunday with two of my working students and I decided to paint from a cell phone image that I took in Bedford, PA last Nov. I loved the lines in it and the position of the church and moon.  I decided to use a sheet of the dark charcoal colored pastelmat (I get the pads and never use this color!). It was quite perfect for the subject.  In the photo, everything from the mountain down was a charcoal gray color. I made more hint of light on the church and used various violets, along with greens in the road, mountain, and foliage.  I wasn’t sure what to do about the trees, and thought I’d put them in first. But it wasn’t going to work. So I did the entire sky first, using various blues and light orange and yellow. The trees went on over quite easily but I tried not to overdo them. I added the car in the road and tried to give the sense of head and tale lights–not sure how successful that is. There was a car parked instead of moving that I used as a model.

I didn’t do any finger-blending–you really can’t with Pastelmat!  But I found that Ludwigs went on beautifully on the surface.

I’ve been teaching about surfaces and textures this week in my classes and it was fun to show the afternoon farm scene and this one as two paintings on very different surfaces and how well I thought each worked.

I’m back to using the resurfaced pastelbord for the painting I started today. Really DO prefer texture in most cases.

Twilight Farm

Twilight Farm, 16 x 20, resurfaced Pastelbord

Twilight Farm, 16 x 20, resurfaced Pastelbord

Board as it appeared after washing off and two coats of primer

Board as it appeared after washing off and two coats of primer

Sometime before Christmas, I got into a clean up mode and washed off or threw out a bunch of unframed paintings. This past weekend I resurfaced 10 of them with a gold-toned batch of Colourfix Liquid Primer.  One of them, in particular, really caught my eye.  It was a 16 x 20 demo on Pastelbord that I did back in 2012 for the Virginia Pastel Society. The photo was taken in the middle of the day and included snow on the ground and that is what I painted. However, when I washed it off and added the gold gel, I fell in love with the design of the houses and the blue greens of the underpainting against the golden gel that was pretty solid in areas that hadn’t been underpainting. What struck me was the relative darkness of it and the design of the buildings, which I loved (of course!)

I decided that this painting would be more of a late afternoon painting, perhaps from the fall, as the tree is bare. I didn’t have a photo to work with–only the board. I did a values study with markers, determining that the light would be hitting the left side of the three buildings, with the fourth at right totally in shadow. Also, when doing the values study, I decided not to finish the bottom and leave some of the gold surface just as it was.

Colorwise, I knew that I wanted to work with blue greens, blue violets, and ocher/earth tones and I pretty much kept to that. Beginning with the sky, I used blue violet and blue green Ludwigs, darker on the right and lighter on the left. At the bottom of the sky on left, I used a Ludwig pale orange.  I used various dark blue greens and some blue violet in the dark bushes (I decided these must be evergreen, as the tree was bare!)

For the house and buildings,  I combined an ocher, a blue green, and a blue violet and laryered them, ending with the violet. I used a pale bright yellow in the sunlit areas, trying to make the house front the main attraction.  For the area around the buildings, I quickly brushed on two shades of green, with light in the front (and on the left side of the bushes). I roughly added bare bushes around the buildings. Then, I rather quickly added the foreground. At first I had a strip at the bottom, smack in the middle, so I extended it to the right, so that the bare patches of gold would not be the same.  And I decided it was done! It took me maybe 3 hours and I loved every minute of it!  I DO love working on this kind of surface. I particularly loved the way the gold showed through in the sky, making it sparkle.

I may even have a buyer for it!!!  But that’s not so important right now as knowing that I was able to rescue a board and make something much better out of it. It gave me a real feeling of satisfaction.  I have to admit that I prefer Pastelbord resurfaced than on it’s own!

As a postscript, I have to tell you a funny story. In Jan. John and I hosted our court neighbors for an open house. A Russian couple, who have lived here 12 years but we had never met, came with their 10 year old son. It turns out that the husband is from an art dealing background and knows a lot about art. AND–it also turns out that some years back a bag of my thrown-out paintings blew out of the garbage can and onto his front yard, and my paintings have been gracing his son’s walls for years without him having any idea who had done them!!!  You just never know!!!