Cactus Garden in Rain Country, 20 x 16, UART dark 320 board

Hello Friends!  I realized today that I never posted my most recent painting.  It’s quite different, so I wanted to share the experience with you.  Meanwhile, I hope that you are keeping safe and enjoying whatever holidays you are celebrating.

The reference photo was taken in Portland, Oregon during our October trip.  The grounds around the hotel were beautiful and I was really struck by this garden of cacti and other succulents.  I liked the dark shadows behind the sunlit cactus, creating a clear center of interest. And I liked the fact that the other one was in shadow and thus, quite different. There’s a good composition here and that’s critical.

But, I haven’t worked much on dark surfaces.  I began with my Caran d’ache hard pastels, laying in some basic shapes for the two big cacti, and the various colors around them.  I did that in my public studio in late November, then quit for the month of December.  However, I kept thinking about how much I loved doing just that initial stage.  So I got it out and worked for an afternoon and this is the result!

My main concern was the fill-ins of various colors around the large shapes.  But, after I got started, I realized that I could take a lot of freedom using colors to keep the eye flowing, and differing shapes to keep the picture interesting.  I loved doing the cactus blossoms with their pink caps and little sunlit spikes.

For the real darks, I used Ludwig eggplant and some of my Ludwig intense darks, but very ligthly.  Starting a picture like this on the dark surface was really great.  I used Blue Earth turquoises for the dark and light blue green cacti and they worked beautifully.

This was a lot of fun and I plan to do more of these.  I showed it to a gallery owner and he gave me a thumbs up.  SO, as much as I love using underpaintings and landscape, I think I’ll play with this for awhile.

Meanwhile, I’ve been busy developing my classes for this winter. I will be giving two zoom classes on Monday mornings and Wednesday afternoons, beginning the end of January. I now have people from all over and that’s really great. I’m planning to put a lot of emphasis on how to work from photos–including making changes, simplifying, and using the photo as a reference.  And, I will also focus on the use of pastel–materials, techniques, strokes.  We’ll do three paintings using mid-toned surface, dark surface, and underpainting and I’ll be doing three demos, exhibiting each surface and technique.  So lots to do, but I LOVE teaching this way.  It’s so much fun to prepare and use the Powerpoints and using Padlet is giving us new options in seeing the work and critiquing.  If you are interested, let me know.  There is still plenty of room in both classes.

A very happy New Year’s to you all. Let’s hope that Omicron comes and goes very quickly.

Jean