Dark purple wash on toned board
First applications of pastel
It’s a rainy day here in Maryland. I had intended to paint outside today, but that’s not to be. So I’m spending the day in the studio with two CD’s of John Lewis’s jazz improvisations of Bach’s preludes and fugues. I know nothing about jazz and don’t often listen to it. But I do know a little about Bach and these albums are amazing. This is a total side issue–except that I’m hoping that listening to a genius like Lewis improvise on the music of our greatest genius, Bach, will help me improvise on my color!!! This is another reinterpretation of a painting I did years ago. I’m working on a 16 x 20 pastelbord. The original painting, which I worked on last week, was washed off and I applied two coats of toned gel. I decided to do a simple underpainting of the composition with a single hard pastel in dark violet to get the overall shapes of the land, water and sky. When I started applying pastel, I used Giraults for the background trees and bushes and soft Terry Ludwigs for much of the sky and the water below. I love the shapes in this picture; nothing dramatic, but pleasing to me. I didn’t do a good job with it the first time (a number of years ago)–too much color–and I’m hoping I can do a better job this time around. The photo is all greens and browns, pretty dull. So I’ll see where it goes! I’m being brave to put this on the blog at this point because I don’t know whether it’s going to work or not, but so far I have really good feelings about it and that always helps!
Jean, I missed your workshop on the Cape so am learning from your wonderful blog. Your composition is fantastic as is the painting so far. Love it! I am just starting a painting over a wash out but never thought to put anything over the raw paper. Should I be putting gel or clear gesso over it.. the orig is on Kitty Wallis paper? Lee
Lee–thanks for writing. The reason I add the gel to Pastelbord is that once it’s been washed off it loses its tooth and is too smooth. I don’t always like the results, but for a picture like this one, the lines of the brush strokes can be a plus. I used to use the gel (Art Spectrum liquid primer) for most of my paintings, but lately have decided that I prefer good sanded papers, like the Wallis and UART. My experience with washed-out Wallis is that it keeps it’s tooth. My painting Evening Calm, Port Clyde, was done on washed off mounted Wallis museum grade and it worked beautifully. You can probably feel it with your hands to see if it’s OK. And by the way, I’ll be doing a demo on the Cape on June 30th in Falmouth at the Falmouth Art Center, 2:00. Hope you can make it there.