Spring Apples, No. 2, 16 x 20, pastelbord with AS liquid primer

Stage 1. picture as completed at demo

Background completed

Yesterday I spent several very happy hours in my home studio finishing off a demo that I began for the Olney Art League last May!  The board (a resurfaced pastelbord) had been sitting in my studio all that time and I had decided to chuck it. It was next to the trash can!!!  But then I received an inquiry from a friend in the library community about my painting Spring Apples from my newsletter.  When I told her the price, it was too much. But then I remembered the one I was about to toss.  So I offered to try finishing it off for her.  She loves it and I’ll be bringing it to my framers today.

When I began this for Olney, I used a brown-toned Art Spectrum liquid primer to cover a pre-used pastebord.  I talked about the need for texture in this type of subject matter. My previous painting had been done on Rives with the primer.  The brush strokes in this one are much more obvious in this one, the substrate being harder.  At the demo, I did an underpainting, then began broadly laying in the areas of color–sky, field, green and pink trees.  I’m showing you the painting as it was completed in the demo (stage 1) and the painting after I’d completed the background (stage 2).  I used a warm blue green and a light yellow green for the sky and once it was complete, I fell in love with the painting and knew I could do a good job with it!

I used nothing but soft pastels for this. Because the surface is so hard, the soft ones are needed. I found a wonderful array of Great American “majenta” pastels in my storage boxes and used them for the pinks. I used very light greens for the white apple blossoms, and added yellow on the ones facing the sun. I used a mix of very warm brownish greens for the tree in upper right corner.  Very dark green and Ludwig “eggplant” for the dark area under the trees.  There are some small pieces of light grasses that I added into the dark that may be seen if you look at the picture in an enlarged format.

I’m so happy that I rescued this painting and completed it. Now that it’s spring again, I could finally get into the mood to complete it and having a buyer never hurts!!!

Autumn White, 14″ x 18″, UART 400

Stage 1. Graphite lay-in

Stage 2. Hard pastel underpainting

Stage 3. Underpainting with alcohol

Stage 4. First pastel on rocks

Stage 5. Water and reflections

Stage 6. White flowering shrub added

Stage 7. Bottom grasses added; demo ended

Today I did a demonstration for my Monday class. I then worked on the painting in my studio and finished it. Two of my new students weren’t there, so I decided to take a lot of pictures at

Stage 8. Rocks completed, more in water

Stage 9

various stages, which I will put in this blog and discuss what was happening at each stage.

Stage 1–the lay-in was done yesterday using an HB pencil, then going over it with a brush and water.

Stage 2. I began the underpainting using various greens and grays, and a very dark green at the bottom with a little warm color added in. I told the class not to get too worried about the colors one chooses for the underpainting. What’s really important are the value shapes.  I went with various greens because I had the right range of values and I figured I’d end up with violet!  I chose one reddish color to work in the colored grasses at the top, using red as a cool color over which orange would later be added.

Stage 3. I quickly applied the alcohol. What was pleasing was that I could still see where the reflections of the rocks were and the diagonal leading back to the flowering bush.

Stage 4.  I did the rocks pretty fast for me!  I used various blue violets and neutrals and tried to maintain the diagonals. I worked quite freely and abstractly, using more colors than I really wanted in the finished painting.

Stage 5. I next worked on the water and reflections, I decided that I had to lay it in behind the bush before I could add it. So I used Giraults and Ludwigs to get the part of the water behind the bush complete enough to add it in (they all wanted to see that in the demo, of course!)

Stage 6.  I next added the bush using very light violet, green and cream Schminckes and a lemon yellow tinted white.  The bush started out too small, but I just worked on over it. Brushing it out would not have been a good idea!  The really soft pastels are needed at this point in order to be able to get a clean stroke on top of the layered greens of the water. I used a pretty firm push to add the color.

Stage 7. At this point, I added in the warm colors of the grasses at the bottom, working from dark to light.  I stopped the demo at this point–1.5 hours total!

Stage 8. In my studio, Took a new look at it and decided the rocks were too dark. So I used various Giraults and soft Schminckes to lay in more neutral colors, lights and a more constant shade of violet.  I also began adding more colors to the grasses in the rocks to make them less red.

Stage 9. I added the small plants, grasses, etc. to the rocks, and did more with the water and reflections.

Final: I added the green grasses at bottom.  This is an unusual painting as it isn’t really a landscape, more of a still life in a way. There is no real distance in it!

This is the last painting from the fall set of photos. Hoping to get to the canal this week when the temp. goes into the 70’s.  I thought I’d also mention that my mounted UART is from French Canvas, which creates True Grit Pastel Panels. There are a number of different sizes, such as this 14 x 18.  I also got 16 x 16!  They are quite nice, come individually wrapped and don’t seem to warp (yet!)

Rock Pines, 16 x 20, Pastel Premiere

Underpainting before alcohol

Underpainting with alcohol

Here’s another painting from my October series. I needed something to do this week!  I have one more, which will be a demo for my Monday class. This one was different from the others I’ve done as it includes more trees, skies, and distant water. Not such a “portrait” of the rocks as the others. I began with a vague idea of where I’d go with the color. Used blue greens in the underpainting. I started with the sky and put a light cool blue in with clouds. Instinctively, I picked up grayed red violets and warm neutrals and it was all over!  I had originally thought I might simplify the trees on right into a single mass of value, (note the underpainting) but once the underpainting was complete, I realized it was much too big. So instead, I worked with values and temperature to make it recede and create more interest.  I started the large mass behind the left side with grayed red violet, then added subtly darker and lighter strokes to indicate branches. In the photo there is a large evergreen behind the smaller pines (?) which I left out. But I decided to add some green into the background to suggest a distant pine and connect the greens to the orange leaves. One of the last things I did in the water was to add aqua just to the right of the furthest rock and this really made it!  I particularly like the dark green bush at left. I found several greens that were just a little lighter than the dark and I liked the subtle effect of it.  This is far from being my favorite from this series, but I enjoyed doing it.

A Touch of White, 20″ x 16″ Pastelbord

A Touch of White–Study, 16″ x 12″ , pastelbord

Watercolor and gouache underpainting

Last week I gave a demonstration for a local art league, the Montgomery Art Association.  Two weeks ago we had a lovely,  small snow fall that left an inch or two on trees but nothing on the roads. I knew it wouldn’t last long, so I left the house at 8:30 AM and headed for Wide Water. I walked with frozen fingers taking pictures, all of them pretty gray!  I thought I’d have a lot of material to work with, but in the end, I decided that this one scene was the best and probably the only one worth doing.  What was really lovely was the snow on the trees and the yellow sky that was beginning to lighten but wasn’t blue.  There was only snow on the tops of the trees, none on the rocks, as I’d hoped there might be (I guess they retained too much warmth from the sun). But the white on the dark pines against the slightly darker background was quite beautiful. I knew that I had my demo subject.

I made some compositional changes by removing other trees behind the main tall tree. I wanted that to stand alone against the background trees. I loved the fact that the background trees, though snow-covered, formed as shape that was darker than the sky but lighter than the tree.  I spent some time doing small color studies on LaCarte, just playing with the color of the rocks, which were their actual green color in this unsunlit photo!  (The green is lichen that covers them.) The color studies were fun, but I felt I needed to have a better sense of where I would be starting.  Since this was pastelbord I’d be working on, and because I wanted the picture to have a lightness to it, I decided on a watercolor underpainting.  AND–I decided to do the whole thing first in a smaller size!  So I used a 12 x 16 board and did the entire painting. This was useful, because I knew I couldn’t finish the painting during the demo but I could show them the finished 12 x 16 at the end. There is one major difference in the two paintings. In the smaller one, I followed the photo and divided up the rocks on the right side. In the demo, I followed the suggestions (pleading?) of some of my students in attendance, and left them larger.  I do like it better.

The colors in this picture are all grayed red violet and subtle greens. There is a little warmth in the orange grasses that grow among the rocks but that’s it!  The coolness and simplicity of color and shapes, gives this picture a more poetic feel, I think.  The small portion of sky was done with two layers: a very light red violet Unison and lemon yellow Art Spectrum tinted white (a very useful pastel!).  I added just a little of the yellow at the bottom but wanted the water to read darker.

The background trees were really easy. Having done both color studies and an initial painting, I had chosen a light violet that would be used to indicate the snow covered limbs. I used Girault grays to indicate the darker under areas, and the ridge on the far right.  For the rocks, I wanted the area on the right to have the most warmth, so I started out the others with grayed violets and cooler greens.  There is a subtle difference that I think works. For the light area of the water at bottom, I used a light violet and an interesting Ludwig pastel that looks cool but goes on warm. Again, my color studies helped with this (I thought I had filmed them–sorry!).

The watercolor underpainting worked fine. I did two applications of it, so that I had a little richer color to work on.  It’s really not my favorite way of doing an underpainting, but sometimes it’s what’s needed.  I wanted to avoid really bright colors, so I used an analogous palette of cool blues, greens and violets. The color is still quite a bit brighter than the painting, but it wasn’t a problem.

This was fun to do but now I’m ready for spring!  I have my tiny Heilmann box filled with Giraults and hard pastels and someday soon hope to go out and sketch or paint.

Russet Leaves, 14″ x 11″, UART 400

Reference photo

Charcoal lay-in

Underpainting

Painting prior to changes in rock and addition of trees

Last night I completed a fourth painting from my October pictures of rocks at Wide Water. I was determined to use different colors in this one!  The photo is all grayish white. I decided to use blues and greens and knew these colors would work well with the color of the leaves. This is the same rock and leaves in the “Terra Cotta Leaves” painting, but the view is not as interesting. The primary challenge was the rock itself. Not only was there a lot of it, but when I started really looking at it, I saw a very unpleasant face staring back!!! (this is obvious in the underpainting). There was also a cut in the rock that looked man-made, and not natural. I started out by copying the photo, but over the progression of the painting, I got rid of the face and the unnatural cut.  My goal was to have enough leaves around it, and the small bush and shadows over it to minimize the shape.  At one point, I cut down the top of the rock to give more dark, and room for the reddish browns at top. I really liked the colors I was using–no violets!  The blues worked really nicely with the colors in the leaves.  I think that the resulting painting, while perhaps not as striking as the first of this rock, is still pleasing.

Yesterday morning we had a lovely snowfall–just an inch. I left at 8:30 and went to Wide Water. It was cold but really beautiful. There was no snow on the rocks, as I had hoped, but there was snow on the trees. With frozen fingers, I snapped over 50 pictures and finally, I have the rocks as they really are with no sun–green!  I have a beautiful photo that I’ll be using as a demo for this Wednesday’s meeting of the Montgomery Art Association and I hope I’ll get photos of the demo in progress. I’m looking forward to continuing this series of paintings with a new selection of photos to work with.  And spring is on the way, so there will be new views and colors to explore.