Isolation/Hope (Norway), 16″ x 20″, Lux Archival

Ink wash underpainting

Detail of mountains

Hello Friends. I hope you are doing OK.  Did you see my last Youtube video on Making Initial Decisions?   I plan to do another one soon on creating “useful” underpaintings.

But in the meantime, I’ve just finished a painting on the new Lux Archival surface, which arrived from Dakota this past week.  It’s quite nice, although I scrapped the first painting I tried. (Might try hosing it down outside!). The paper has a nice backing and stays absolutely flat, which is really lovely.  It’s expensive ($10.75 a sheet) and only comes in 8 x 10 and 16 x 20 or a roll. But it’s a lot cheaper than a $20 mounted 16 x 20 UART board.

For the first painting (the photo and drawing for which are featured in my video), I decided to do a regular hard pastel and alcohol underpainting with the beautiful new Caran d’ache hard pastels that came along with the paper in my order.  Then I began with soft pastels. It wasn’t good!  I felt like I was filling in the tooth of the paper too soon. And, despite all of my “initial decisions”, the composition just wasn’t interesting enough!  So I decided to work on this picture from our August 2019 trip to Scandinavia and the Baltic.  We began in Oslo and took the scenic train to Bergen. At the top of the mountain range was this house, looking really lonely. I wondered WHO owns it?  I’ve always thought about doing it, but now seemed like the perfect time.

I would have done a water color underpainting, but realized I hadn’t retrieved them from my other studio. But I had some bottles of ink that I’d tried out for my class some years ago. So I used those instead. Worked fine and no buckling whatsoever!

Next, I decided that at least to begin with, I would stick to hard pastels and Giraults and that worked quite well.  I used my new set of blue/violet Giraults in the sky and used a combination of hard and Girault for the background mountain.  That was definitely the hard part!  Particularly the right side, where there were gravel banks coming down the hill.  I had to keep the values fairly muted so they didn’t stand out.

For the building, I started it with hard pastels using a cherry red and a lighter pinkish red.  The color of the building is really cherry red–you see it throughout Norway (what I saw of it anyway).  Today, when I went back to it, I decided I didn’t like it . The detail was too perfect!  And it stood out too much compared with all the oranges in the foreground. So I used a warmer Ludwig red and lightly went over it. I also used a hard Caran d’ache olive brown to soften the entire building.  Was much happier with it.

I decided to use more soft pastels in the foreground and it worked well. I think that slowly building up is the way to go with this paper. But others might disagree.

Finally, I added sunlight in the water and some yellow peaking over the mountain in the background.  A small sign of hope!  This wasn’t in the photo, but I had to add it!

Lonesome Pine (Chincoteague), 14″ x 11″, UART 320

NuPastels and Carandache hard pastel sticks used for underpainting

Underpainting, stage 1

Underpainting after alcohol applied

Painting at start of video

Yesterday I did a small 14 x 11 painting and a video on how to paint foregrounds.  I went once more to my stash of images from 1.5 days in Chincoteague in 2015!  Found a good image with a lot of foreground, did some preliminary sketches, and changed the orientation to vertical.  Since the demo was about the foreground, I did the underpainting and then painted in the sky, tree and midground.  You can see the video at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTBbvt5Deqs&t=622s

Because the painting would be cool–all blues and greens, I instinctively chose warm colors for the the underpainting, using a mix of NuPastels and some of my favorite Caran d’ache colors.  Some of this can still be seen poking through the painting, but most of it got covered!

For the sky, I determined that the sun is coming from the left, so I made the upper right corner slightly darker.  I used two close values of blue Ludwig pastels to paint the top half, then chose two turquoises for the bottom.  I waited until I was working on the tree to finish the small pieces around the branches.  Given how much sky there is, I decided that I needed some clouds.  These were added with a soft very light white-orange.

The background trees were three values of fairly light greens–grayed and brownish with a violet lightly brushed over to cool it down.  There is warm green below the distant trees. I added it and then added a duller stick over, again to keep it from being to bright–way back there in the distance!

For the tree, I took my time, using a blue and dark blue green Girault, along with various other mid-toned greens.  Got into darker and brighter greens for the midground and chose colors to be used in the video.

Several of my students requested that I do a demo of a foreground.  It’s daunting to some because it’s where all the detail is. I have to get up the courage and just go for it!  I said in the video that it’s something of a performance, but one I generally like to do for myself!  In thinking about this demo, I realized that there are the challenges of detail and not overdoing it.  But that it also provides a chance to use softer pastels and expressive mark-making.  You have to set yourself up with a good underpainting, so the composition and values are there.  Then, you can go to town and have a good time!  I think this worked pretty well.

I’m getting better at the videos. This is my fourth.  I now have a channel on Youtube and hope to make them more advanced and professional as I go along.  I AM something of a performer so it’s not completely alien to me!  After teaching for more than 15 years, I just pretend that my class is sitting there with me and I talk to them.  But now I can talk to whoever wants to listen!!!

I need to get a mike and maybe we’ll get a videocamera so John can tape them and zoom in on the demo.  I’m also going to explore ways of giving classes online.  I’m not there yet!  I have a large list of Maryland students. But, of course, anyone could participate when it’s online!  Will have to see how things go with the virus and whether I think I can get back to in-person teaching or not.  IF not, then I will definintely be exploring the best ways to teach others from home.  If you have experience or are interested, let me know!

John 2020, 20″ x 16″, Pastel Premiere

After being able to successfully paint me, I HAD to try to paint John!  His 80th birthday is May 17th so I thought this would be a fitting gift.  I started with a graphite drawing, that was pretty bad, then moved on to the charcoal on another 16 x 20 sheet of Pastel Premiere Italian Clay.  I highly recommend this surface for portraits.  It’s got just the right color and texture. I don’t think I’d use anything else.  Can’t imagine doing an underapainting.

My first challenge was to get a photo of him. He tends to pose or smile when he knows I’m filming him.  One evening after dinner, he was sitting at the table with light coming in from windows on either side of him.  I got the Ipad and started shooting and found a picture I really liked.  No smile (or teeth, thank god) but a nice picture that reveals his kindness.  For those of you who don’t know him, he has a lovely sense of humor and has been very easy to live with during “these difficult times”.  So I wanted to capture a little of that.

I didn’t take any pictures of the painting in process as I was not happy most of the time.  I never got the drawing as good as I did on my own portrait.  And when I started applying the color, I thought it looked awful!  However, I persisted!!!  I don’t know how to accurately measure the face so I relied on observation primarily.  (I just read on the internet about the basic proportions, which would have been a help. Fortunately, everything seems to line up with what I read!)

I had the most problem with the shape of the face and the position of the mouth and chin. His face is long and thin but with a few jowls, as you can see.  I first made the nose a little too long, which then meant that the mouth was off.  I had planned not to show the picture to John until his birthday, but yesterday I was desparate and asked him to take a look. He immediately noted that the mouth wasn’t in the right place.  When I shortened the nose, it left too much distance between the nose and the mouth. I was amazed, but then I guess he DOES know his own face!

I knew I wanted to include his hand and i was concerned (and still am) that it might be too small.  I had drawn it larger but the little finger was going to be really fat!  I DO like having the hand in there, more completely painted with the suggestion of the shirt.  He as wearing a beige shirt–not my favorite color!  So I used a number of cool and warm grayed greens that I thought would work well with the reddish-orange tones in the face and hand.  Finally I took the dark blue that I had used in his eyes and applied it to the shirt as well.  I was pretty happy with this and decided to quit!

I put it on Facebook and people are now asking me if I’ll do portraits.  I’ve watched the pros like Christine Swann and Diane Rappisi do portraits and i know that they work very differently from me.  I don’t think this is my forte and I wonder if I could really paint someone I know not at all from a photograph.  It wouldn’t be the same.  While I was painting this I would suddenly study John’s nose or mouth when sitting across from him!  Hard to do that with someone who isn’t here.

But it’s been a great challenge and I won’t say that I won’t give it a try.  After all, as I told one person–it’s really all about value shapes!

I hope you are doing OK out there.  Let’s hope we get a break sometime soon and have a few months of more normal living before fall and winter and who knows what comes!  Happy painting.