Shore Houses in Winter, 16″ x 20″, resurfaced Pastelbord

Initial sketch on toned board

Today I decided to paint something completely different from the fog picture. I had a black and white photo from Mattapoisett that I had taken some years ago (haven’t seen snow there in a number of years!). I knew that a resurfaced pastelbord would be perfect for it as there were many bushes, reeds and trees, as well as a snow-covered road. So I resurfaced my last 16 x 20 board with two coats of relatively dark-toned liquid primer and brought it to the studio this morning.  I didn’t do any sketches or preliminary studies, but I had looked at the photo a lot. The only change i made was to move the houses a bit to the left to minimize the trees at left and give more room for the road. I began with a charcoal and light hard pastel sketch and remembered to take a picture just as I was starting to add the pastel! You can see from the first layer of pastel, how rough the board was.

I began this painting similarly to the way I did the field painting behind my mother’s house. I used Ludwigs and Unisons and brushed in color to lay out the major areas.  For the houses, I used a light green where the yellow would eventually go. The road was the hard part!  I began with blue violets and a blue-tinted white .  Once done, I went back to the sky.  I think I may have overworked it.  I basically got rid of all of the texture so it looks quite different from the rest, but I still rather liked it. I decided to add low clouds on the right to give it more interest, and I added some light red violet as the last thing.

The road was a lot of work and I kept taking breaks. I used a dark blue violet Ludwig in the snow beneath the darkest part of the reeds and I really liked the sense of shadow that it provided.  I used it as well on the road, but then added blue green and other blues and violets over it to tone it down and bring down some of the sky color into the road.  I did not overdo the road like I did the sky, leaving it quite rough in places. The surface really worked for me in trying to create the tire tracks in the snow at bottom.

The bushes and houses were quite simple, in comparison to the road.  Using warm ochres at the right of the grasses, and warm red browns to indicate light on the left, varied nicely with the dark violet and red that I added in the middle. I added the wires at the end using a pastel pencil.

It was fun to do something with structure after the fog of the past two days!  I love both and am happy that I have the opportunity to paint varies scenes.

Red Emerging, #2, 24″ x 18″, mounted 320 UART

Watercolor underpainting

Over the past three days I’ve been in the studio, while Jeanne Rossier Smith has been teaching a workshop of 18 members of the Maryland Pastel Society in the classroom that I normally teach in. It’s fun to be there at the same time and I want them to feel welcome at Artists and Makers.  So I’ve had a lot of time to paint.  Last fall I did a painting that I loved doing–Red Emerging.  I put it on Facebook and sold it almost immediately!  With that, I decided that I wanted to do it again larger so that I could spend more time on it and have the painting as well. I had purchased an 18 x 24 True Grit panel with this in mind so I was all set.

But when I looked at the size of the panel last week, it seemed awfully big!  So I gave thought to turning it horizontally and adding other things.  But when I went to do the painting, I realized that I wanted to keep it pretty much the way it was.  I printed out a picture of sumac that I thought I might add on the left.

As with the first painting, I began with a totally abstract watercolor underpainting. I used a warm orange for the sky and tried to get the darks as rich as possible. For the bottom, I used a violet and then a deep warm brown on top of it.  The underpainting worked well for me, providing color to work over, without worrying about the composition at this point.

The composition was a major concern with this painting.  I had to keep it from being half and half. I tried putting the sumac in at the base of the birch tree, but I really didn’t like it!  So I got rid of it and late in the game, lightly added the hint of a red tree just to the right of the birch in the background.

I had more foreground in this painting than in the first one, so I decided to do more with rocks. I had added some to the first but decided to add more and make them more prominent. I got rid of one and kept the others as visitors to the studio said that they liked them.  Another compositional change was to raise the foreground on the left to push it back further and keep it from being too straight.

I had a great time with the background on the left side. I used various greens to indicate trees, going light as it went up and then put a light violet in. The violet really pushed it back. And in the area of leaves in the birch, I added a pale majenta into the green to further gray it.  For the tree on the right, I used a lot of Blue Earth quinacrodone red–a cool red with a lot of grays that were just perfect.  I also used my box of turquoise and their grays for the leaves.  These pastels are so handy in a painting like this where the values and chroma are so important.

Jeanne was focusing her workshop on color–value, chroma and temperature.  I realized that that was what this painting was all about!

March Morning, 16 x 20, resurfaced Pastelbord

Initial layers of pastel

My second painting was also from an old photo and on a resurfaced Pastelbord with the same gold-tone liquid primer. It’s a photo of my mother’s back yard, taken in March before the grass turned green.  The early morning sun comes through the trees and hits the brambles and sides of the trees in the back of the yard and I’ve taken any number of photos of this over the years. (The house was sold in 2014, so this has some sentimental value.)  Like the heron painting, I had tried drawing the trees to determine the composition and had had problems with it. This time, I just loosely drew the trees onto the board with charcoal.  I decided to make one important change by bringing the tree on the left that curves off the left to the foreground, in order the break up the line.

I did not want to lose the gold surface, so for this one, I began by defining the trees with three values of Girault grayed violet, then added a light turquoise in the sky and other colors to define the bushes and grassy area.  Note that what was in the photo was a lawn, much like what you see in the “initial layers of pastel”.  It was really boring!

I began to get excited about this piece when I picked up a relatively soft blue violet and started adding it to the trees. This really perked them up. One tree was noticeable warmer and I used red violets and browns on it. I worked on the large trunks, correcting from my original sketchy beginning. Then I finished off the sky behind them with more turquoise and a light Ludwig orange over that on the right side.  Then I added in the small branches, keeping them very loose.

I had fun doing the background bushes and brambles and the more distant trees within them that were catching the light.  The background trees and field also were fun to do.  Because the light was coming from the upper right, they were light but cool in tone.  So I got all that done and then was faced with the lawn!

Having used blue violet, I realized that yellow orange was what was needed and that a field would be far superior to dull green grass!  So i rather quickly added it.  I added some darks in, then went over them, trying to give a pattern. There was also a hint of a path showing and I decided to emphasize that by adding the more yellow tones, that could have resulted from light coming through the opening.

This was a fun painting to do of something I’ve always wanted to paint but couldn’t figure out how to do successfully.  I find that this kind of problem solving is really fun and it helps me (and those who sometimes work with me and make suggestions) on our toes!

Keeping Watch, 14″ x 11″, resurfaced Pastelbord

Initial stage

After first applications of pastel

These past weeks I’ve been “playing” — using resurfaced Pastelbords and old photos. I came across a photo I had taken of a heron sitting on rocks at Wide Water, near Great Falls on the C&O Canal. The photo was in black and white and it was a horizontal photo that showed a lot of foliage on the right side. I had spent time drawing it some years ago but thought it was going to be too complex. Upon finding the photo, I realized that I could do it as a vertical and leave out a whole lot of boring greenery.  What I loved was the way the light was coming in and strafing the background rocks and that the bird and foreground rocks were light against dark. I  also loved the fact that the photo was B&W and I never went to look for the original. I know that there would have been a whole lot more green!

I had a board with gold-toned liquid primer on it from a batch I made up this winter.  I drew the bird and rocks onto the board, then added watercolor around it to further tone the board, leaving a lot of the gold showing in the light places.  I wanted to keep the detail in the center and let the top and bottom go off into less description. So I was careful laying in the color, beginning in the upper left with the rocks and the green bush. I used Ludwig pastels to lay in the color in the background rocks, using a combination of dark “eggplant”, a lighter red violet, and several oranges.  I added small details of light  and tried very hard not to overdo it.

For the rocks that the bird is on, I used a combination of pastels, but began with muted Giraults.  The greens were all done with my Blue earth green set and the bird was also done with soft Blue Earth blues.  I couldn’t use anything harder as it wouldn’t make enough of an impact on the hard, textured board. I used the dark to go around the bird’s head and refine the beak, etc.

This was painting that I absolutely LOVED doing!  It felt really good to lightly layer in the pastel and I tried really had not to overdo it. I was also concerned about the light on the right overpowering the area where the bird is standing. I added orange on the left side of the rounded rock and added aqua to the rocks at right to try to keep them in check. I also brought greenery from the right on over the rock on which he was standing, a change from the photo that makes a bit different. There was a large gap there that didn’t look realistic. You can see it in the initial stage.

I’m really happy with the way this painting came out and hope to do more like this!

The Sentinel, Chincoteague, 24″ x 18″, Rives with liquid primer

Cropped color photo reference

Over the last two days I was in the studio from 10:00-4:00 for our twice yearly open studios weekend. I decided to do yet another Chincoteague picture (probably the last!). For this one, I decided that I wanted to work on a prepared surface and I toned and brushed Colourfix liquid primer on Rives printmaking paper. I liked the way the surface allowed me to use soft pastels to create various textures.  As you can see, the color photo has very little color, so I printed it out in black and white and worked with a green/blue/orange color palette.  When I lightened the photo, I could see that there were orange grasses on the left and some orange in the grasses at right.

As is typical, the sky and water were completely whited out in the photo. I decided to add more blue green to the sky, then added a light cool green and Ludwig very light orange.  When doing the water, I added more blue greens into it to reflect the sky I had created, rather than what was in the photo.

The tree was a major challenge. It’s the most prominent feature of the picture and it was odd. I think that it had a vine on it that created a solid mass.  At first I drew the tree too large, then got it to a more reasonable size, and I was quite pleased with the way that it turned out–better than the photo, I think.

I particularly liked the path to the left of the tree and the distant trees in haze. I use Ludwig blues and Blue Earth grayed greens.  I actually used a lot of Blue Earth in this picture–most of the greens are from the green and turquoise sets. (I find that the “turquoise” is really just a cool green, which is very useful.)

The 24 by 18 shape is different from the wider reference photo and I much prefer it.  Compositionally, what I really liked was the “S” shape of the darks beginning in the foreground and moving up to the tree.

I very much enjoyed doing this painting.  And thanks Renata for the title!!!