Forsythia, 20″ x 24″, Pastel Premiere 600 grit

Underpainting with water

Painting with background laid in

I did this painting to prove to myself that I can work with colors I really don’t like–YELLOW!  UGH.  Trying to figure out a pleasing color palette on this was hard. I finally just copied the photograph!  So it’s yellow, orange, green, and violet.

The photo is of our side yard last spring. It was a misty morning and i really liked the way the forsythia stood out from the violet background.  But there was a lot of green in it. I thought of leaving it out, but, as you can see, I didn’t.  I think it’s better as a result.

This is my last mounted board of the 600 grit paper, thank goodness!  I new I couldn’t use alcohol, but the water color underpaintings have been doing very little for me.  So I decided to use hard pastel and water.  Given that the paper was mounted, it was fine, although definitely not as good as alcohol.  (I don’t advise students to buy the white paper because it buckles with water on it and isn’t very practical. )

I worked on getting the darks in on the lower right to begin with.  I used a dark Unison green and Terry Ludwig eggplant.  That worked pretty well.  For the background I used three values of violet, including a very light whitish violet for the lighter areas.  This was the easy part!  Then I used a very soft, cool green for the background bush on the left.  Thought that worked as well.

For the forsythia, I used a combination of real oranges, yellow oranges, yellow greens and true yellow.  I think it works pretty well.

That’s enough of this stuff.  On to some buildings I think!

On Friday, I got accepted to the District Arts Gallery in Frederick and they really like my city paintings. So I may do some small ones of Frederick as a change from this!

Lock and Snow, Great Falls, 20″ x 24″, Pastel Premiere Italian Clay

Reference photo

Partial completion 1

Partial completion 2

Hello Friends. I’ve been painting more snow, even though there’s just rain here.  I went back to a 2015 image from the canal that I painted as a 16 x 20 and sold in that year. Decided to do it again for my Dec. 2020 show of winter pastels.  I printed out the image in both black and white and color and realized how beautiful it is!  I don’t think I’ve ever taken such an almost perfect picture!  The only thing I don’t like in the photo is the reflection of tree right down the middle.

The only 20 x 24 choices I had were the 600 grit Pastel Premiere and a large sheet of the Italian Clay and I decided the latter would better.  So no underpainting, which always leaves me a little at a loss.  I drew the image with an HB pencil and the started from the top and worked down. I’m just not one of those people who can lay in large swaths of color when there won’t be any alcohol going on top of it!

The primary challenge to begin with was determining the value of the snow bank on the left.  I started with a fairly light violet, then decided to try a darker blue.  Put a little on and realized it was way too dark so brushed it off.  I ended up using violet, blue and a blue green in the same value of Girault. Later added some softer pastel on top.  For the light areas of the snow on the left I used a combination of very light greens, pink, orange and yellow–mainly the Ludwig lightest in each color.

For the lock, I listened to my husband complain about the large “dark hole” in the middle and I tried hard to add subtly lighter areas, pieces of ice and snow, and then the yellow and orange grass heads in front of it.

The grasses took some work as di the right side, which is not well defined and kind of messy in the photo!  But all came out OK.

My biggest challenge turned out to be the reflections in the water something I’m usually good at!  I tried putting in the reflection and then the colors of the water but lost the reflection so had to add them in over the water.  I felt suddenly like I’d never done this before.  Am I starting to lose it???  (Hopefully not! )  Perhaps an underpainting would have helped.

The last challenge was being able to differentiate the snow bank from the water on the left. I darkened it with a softer violet pastel and I think it works pretty well now. But it’s not as dramatic as the partial images before the water was added.  I love the sweep of the land here and didnt want to lose it.

That’s it!  Off to my piano lesson.