Snow-Covered Road (West Harris), 20″ x 16″, UART 320 board

Initial drawing, 10 x 8

Drawing on UART 320 board

Hard pastel underpainting, stage 1

My first “published” (on Facebook) painting of the year is this one of snow.  It was a joy to paint snow again!  They hadn’t predicted any for us this winter so I was really surprised when it occured, not once but twice last week!  Having fallen after the first snowfall, my husband took me for a ride on my favorite un-paved road–West Harris Road near Sugar Loaf Mountain.  I wanted to go there as I figured there would be more snow on the road and less travel and I was right. I took photos from the car.  I knew when I took this one it would be the one I painted, given the angles of the road and snow banks and the light coming from the right.

This was also a joy because I didn’t have to change much (compared to my sunflower painting)–primarily the color (and that’s easy!). There was a large thick post and fence in the area where the orange grasses are that I immediately deleted.  But other than that, I pretty much followed the photo.  I love the way the snow banks and angles of the shadows on the road create dynamic tension.  But doing the shadows was hard and I redid them many times. At first, I had a band of shadows all completely equidistant and really boring!  Shadows are hard for me.  My other mistake was to use a Ludwig tinted orange white to cover up the entire field, which was just too much. Then, I added some Blue earth on top and it was way too YELLOW!!!  SO, I brushed it off, put on a layer of white-blue, then added my Art Spectrum tinted white “lemon” pastel on top.  That was MUCH better.

I loved doing the snow on the trees, using some grayed blue green and blue violets and a lovely hint of light with the lemon yellow.

For the darker areas in the road, I used the grayed Blue Earth “turquoises” which are quite brown and were really perfect for this.  The Blue Earth grays have wonderful colors that just fit the bill in so many cases.

I used a combination of warm greens and violets in the background trees, with some dark red violet and dark blue at the base.  For the sky, I used one or two soft turquoises with a hint of clouds lightly brushed on top.  It seemed just right.

Now I’m focusing on demos for my classes. I’ve done one (of snow) and have two more to go.  But it’s been lovely painting for myself!

Jean

Mount Pleasant Market, 20″ x 16″, UART Dark 400 mounted board

Initial “completion”

Today I finished what started out to be  first painting of 2022.  And it turned out to be one of the most challenging paintings I’ve done!  It’s a market scene from the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of NW DC, near Columbia Rd and Adams Morgan.  A visitor to my studio some years ago suggested I go there. Many of the houses are painted with interesting colors!  But what I loved was the market and the sunflowers.  I really wanted it to be about the flowers, but once you add figures (particularly in the middle) it’s very hard not to make it about them!

I decided to work on the dark UART to give the flowers a chance to “pop” and they really did!  But, there was very little drawing and I had to wing it with the flowers.  I made a lot of changes to the composition from the reference photo, which I’ve included. The large green awning is the smaller brown awning that is further back in the photo.  There was a woman at the far right who I decided to leave out.  Everything was more complex and filled with “stuff”!  I added the light colored awnings from a different photo to fill space and lightly indicated vegetables on tables underneath.

The flowers were the fun part!  I loved the way they stand out.  The large flower in upper left is an odd red color in the photo faces left. I decided to make it orange and face right so as to keep the eye in the picture plane.  I loved putting the color on the white bins that hold the flowers.  I started with blues and greens, then added violet over.  It became a lovely cool area of “calm” that sets off the flowers.

The image “initial completion” is where I started this morning.  I had disucssed it with a friend and we both agreed that the background needed to be tamped down somehow. And that the figure on the right (with long hair) looked a little “cartoonish.”  I began by darkening the head band on woman on left so that it didn’t stand out as much.  Then I changed the figure on the left, taking out her headband, adding a scarf and eliminating  most of the long hair.  I think it’s much better now.  I also reworked the background buildings, giving a sense of light and shadow. And I added light clouds to the sky to soften the line between the buildings and the sky.   I also added shadows to the green awning, which was flat.  And added more vegetables to the table.

That’s about it.  I DO think that the flowers really stand out now, more than they did originally. And it’s clear what the painting is supposed to be about.  This was a challenge of working with a lot of detail and having to make serious changes and simplifications to the photo.  My winter zoom classes are going to focus on working from photos, as well as working in pastel, so this was a great exercise for me!  Still room if anyone is interested.  Contact me at: jeanhirons48@gmail.com  Classes start the week of Jan. 31.

Cheers and Happy New Year!

Jean