Day’End, Marion, 14″ x 11″, UART 320

Reference photo

Partial underpainting before alcohol

Partial underpainting with alcohol

Early stage after input of sky

Today a friend wanted to come to the studio at 1:00 and I was free so came early and decided to do one more painting for this year.  It’s appropriate being a sunset!  The photo, had a lovely sky by way too many leaves covering and black at the bottom, so I had decided earlier not to bother with it. But today I thought I might as well tackle it and see what I could do.  I looked at various surfaces and decided that the 11 x 14 would be best.  I did a simple drawing, leaving out the leaves on the right and emphasizing the arc of the tree and liked it. I also decided to add some water at the bottom right, to open up the picture a bit.

I decided that the colors in the sky were too subtle and not to do an underpainting there. So I did a quick partical underpainting, primarily to lay in the shape of the leaves and to get the darks in below.  This worked well.

I had to begin the sky first.  I thought about using pan pastels but I didn’t have the applicators. Instead, started with Giraults and ended with much softer Schminckes, very lightly applied.  It worked well over the beige paper.  I went from cool blues to warm greenish blues then to pinks and oranges and violets on the right and a cool green, yellow green and yellow on the left.  I’m not real happy with the clouds.  The look like four plops of pink!  They are just barely visible in the photo and I wanted them due to their color, but I’m not sure how much they add.  I may do some more work on them before I frame it.

This is a painting with many layers, the sky, the background marsh, and the tree and leaves in the foreground.  I put the blues of the sky in and around the leaves to give them form and used a hard pastel for the tiny branches coming off the tree.  The biggest challenge of the painting was probably the foreground leaves. Some were bright red, others greens and yellows and were backlit.  I tried to get enough of them in to make it interesting and added a few bright pieces of red orange.

It’s almost Christmas and the beginning of a new year.  I hope that you will have safe travels and enjoy the company of loved ones and friends.  We look forward to hosting Christmas eve here with two couples from our UU congregation. We will play the piano and the psaltry, tell stories and poems and eat cioppino and other good things!  It will be my first Christmas here and the first without my mother.  A time for new traditions to begin.  Wishing you all the best!

Jean

Autumn’s Brilliance Adamsville, R.I., 12″ x 16″ Uart 320

Reference photo

Underpainting, hard pastel and alcohol

I had a few free hours today and decided to go to the studio.  I had already found a photo to paint from and done and compositional drawing and had it on the board.  But the real challenge in the picture was that it was really blah!  It was taken in autumn and there were wonderful reds on the trees by the gas station but not here by the lake!  Adamsville is a lovely small town  on the border of Mass. and R.I. and I’ve been there to paint and film many times.  In looking over potential photos a week ago, I realized that this one–though lacking in color–had wonderful shapes in the buildings.  So I decided to do it and envisioned making the tree red and the shadowed white buildings shades of blues and greens.

For the buildings, I used several colors in each to give the sense of shadow, not wanting flat colors.  I played with really deep darks and bright lights, to emphasize the idea of a bright, sunny day.  The backlighting of the tree was one of the things I thought could be most appealing and I think that it’s worked.  I used dark green, then a dark red, with brighter reds and oranges on the sides, and a duller red in the reflection.

The water was extremely easy to do!  I used a blend of violets grayed blues and a little of the sky color and burnished it all with a Girault.  Then added the light on the water with a very light blue green soft pastel.  Of course I had to make up the red reflections!  But I think they work OK.

I’m happy that I found this picture and saw the possibility in it.  I’ll include it in my spring show called “Shorescapes”.  It may be a little inland, but there is water and it’s very close to the ocean!

Hope you all have a lovely Christmas — or had a wonderful Hannukkah!  2019 promises to be anything but boring!!!

Grace, 24″ x 18″ Wallis Belgian mist (!)

Early stage

A few weeks ago John and I took a Sunday afternoon walk at Lake Frank. It was overcast and the leaves were gone but i brought my phone with me, just in case.  I took some photos but didn’t get very interested until, on the way back, I saw some bare trees standing in a field of grasses.  I took a number of pictures and realized that I had something.  I remembered the grasses as having a reddish brown hue to them, but trying to make them more interesting in Photoshop turned them into a warm yellow brown, which I didn’t want.  So I decided I’d just wing it and push the color a bit!

When I moved my pastel cabinet to my new studio last spring, I discovered two 18 x 24 sheets of Wallis Belgian mist, which I’ve been saving for something special.  I knew that this was the perfect match!  I didn’t want an underpainting. I wanted to be able to draw and react to the paper and enjoy it and I really did!  It’s a pity that this paper is no longer available but the Italian clay Pastel Premiere is quite good.

I began with a drawing of the tree and the idea that I’d make the background recede. In the photo, the background trees are more prominent and the same color and value as the big tree.  I used Giraults to fill in the background trees (the solid part). Then I found a small piece of light soft violet that I began applying to the sky and loved it. I decided that it was  a Schmincke and was SO happy to find that I had an entire replacement stick in my cabinet!

At one point I thought about doing a vignette and not filling it all in, but I realized that it wouldn’t work well. So I put the violet over the entire background, then used on Girault to lightly indicate the trees. I used Giraults for the grasses as well and let them blend in together, using various reddish browns and a warm brownish green.

For the tree, I started with Girault, but moved to softer pastels and ended up using very light applications of Blue Earth, using the grayed violet, cool green and yellow sets.  I thought I had finished the painting on Monday but when I looked at the photo, I immediately said “this tree’s too fat”!!!  You can see it in the early stage image.  So I carved away at it on the right side, using the colors of the sky and grasses to shave it off. I also added lichen to the trunk in several places as it was looking too much the same in my photo.

I had been thinking about calling this “Quietude” but today in class my students talked about the gracefulness of the tree and I decided to call it Grace.  I’m happy with this one!