Orange on the Rocks, 16 x 16, UART 400

Partially painted, showing dry underpainting

Reference photo

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.  I finished clean up today, got a few Christmas things done, then went off to the studio to finish up a painting I’ve worked on this past week. It’s another rock portrait from Great Falls.  This is a very busy picture!  I wanted the focus to be on the small tree with orange leaves casting a shadow against the whitish rocks. There are a LOT of rocks in this one!  I’m including the reference photo as well, so you can see the original color.

I began this again with hard pastel over graphite and decided to spray rather than use alcohol. The original colors had a lot of aqua and blues in them. For the final, I used grayed violets, browns and greens.  I also made some compositional changes to play more with the dark crevices and the pattern of darks in the picture. The original photo was not a square, so I had to make some change at the top, where I had more room. I decided to use a small tree surrounded by orange leaves, rather than the thicker tree in the photo, which is surrounded by rocks.

From the initial image (partially done), you can see that I started out the cast shadow of the small tree in a lighter violet. I realized that it was too close in value to the leaves. So I darkened the shadow.  Then I added more darks to the leaves and more saturated strokes of a medium light Schmincke orange to make them standout. I had a challenge with the yellow leaves that are leading up the rocks to the right. At first I had them too bright and they detracted from the tree.  I tamed them down with yellow greens on top of the yellow.  I’m hoping that the oranges of the grasses and leaves also create a path through the picture, along with the darks. I used some finger smudging to try to lose hard edges but there is still alot of contrast, so I”m not sure how well the center of interest stands out.

I didn’t have quite the same tooth in this painting because the surface is 400 and not 320. But I still enjoyed layering color and coming up with something more colorful than the original.

Cascading Gold, 16 x 12, UART 320

I have just completed my first painting on UART 320. I ordered 11 x 14 and 12 x 16 boards from True Grit Pastel Panels and I am VERY pleased! First, I ordered them on Friday and they came on Saturday. Prior to this fall, the company only mounted 400 UART, but after talking to people at the PSA trade show, Robert Mogul decided to expand and cover all or most of the grits. He urged me to try the 320 and I did. I really, really like it!  Here is why: 1) it has wonderful tooth but without the patterning that is found in the 400; 2) it takes multiple layers of hard pastel without them falling off, including the really hard Caran d’ache.  So I’m hooked!

Underpainting and initial layers of hard pastel with fixative

I began the picture with a graphite drawing and put a lot of effort into it. I then added the hard pastel and I realized that I didn’t want to lose the drawing or the color of the underpainting. So I decided to add alcohol only to the background and line of shadow moving down the rocks.  I took the board home and sprayed it with workable fixative.

I then took my time painting the rocks first, then the leaves. In the photo, the yellows were only in the middle of the picture. One of the last things I did was to add the splash of yellow at the bottom and it improved the composition tremendously!

I used many colors in the rocks, violet, blues, and a lot of light grayed greens, which is the actual color one sees due to the lichen on the rocks.  But I wanted the color to have more interest than what was in the photo.

I love doing these “rock portraits” particularly with the various colors of fall leaves. I have begun another and have two more that I may do.  It feels good right now to emerse myself in nature and art. I am mourning the death of Gwen Ifful, along with the recent election and trying to find joy again.

The True Grit panels are sold through the company French Canvas. I highly recommend them! Lots of different sizes and they don’t warp.

Autumn Fields, as initially painted

Dear Friends–It’s been a hard week!  I join millions of others in feeling devastated and worrying about the future of my country. However, I have decided to try to do good things for people and continue to live my life as an artist to the best of my abilities. So, with that in mind, I thought I’d share this recent painting and its ups and downs with you.

I started working on it several weeks ago. It’s a scene from Montgomery County and its soy bean fields.  I really wanted it to be painterly but I struggled with it. Initially, I was excited about a large yellow barn that was in one of the pictures. But I decided that the barn would fight with the tree for prominence and decided to add the small buildings from other photos.  I liked the fact that the foreground had several different plants in it and the way it was broken up, but I couldn’t get the color right.  So I brought it to a critique session with several of my friends.

They loved the tree on the left and the sky, but definitely not the reddish tree in the middle. Nor did they like the foreground.  One friend kept saying “you have your work cut out for you!”

Close up of sprayed area

I took the painting outside and brushed off the entire bottom and as much of the red tree as I could. Then I washed it with a sponge and sprayed it with workable fixative. One of my challenges was that this is pastelbord and it seemed to have no tooth (what happens when I use hard pastel instead of watercolor for the underpainting). I hoped that the spray would give the foreground some texture that I could play with.   So here is an image of part of the foreground after I added some pastel to it. You can see that the underpainting is coming through rather nicely.

I filled in the sky and background trees where the red tree had been and redid the shed, giving it a lighter roof and nice form. I was really happy with it!  But then I had to attack the middle, whose straight line of trees I’d been unhappy with.  I wanted to give it more interest, so I added bushes in front of the left hand trees, added small leaves and bushes, and worked on making the shapes more interesting.  I simplified the area of fields just below, then worked on the bottom part, adding more greens to the dark area and keeping the bottom simple and closer in value to the soy bean field, but making sure there were some darks and more individual strokes.

Soy Bean Fields, 16″ x 20″, Pastelbord

So here is the finished picture.  There is no evidence of the red tree and I think that the lines of dark work better, as does the foreground. I’m quite happy with this picture now. Not my greatest effort, but certainly something I’m OK with.

I wish you all peace and love and happy painting times and I sincerely hope that our blessed country will survive!