Above the Dordogne (Beynac), 16 x 20

Underpainting before liquid primer was added

Today I finished my fourth painting from France. This is from our morning climb to the castle at Beynac, high above the Dordogne River. We climbed endlessly, it seemed. What is beautiful though, are the views from the walls, as well as the old stones that people have walked on for hundreds of years. This painting is all about texture.  I did a compositional sketch in order to change the shape of the river. It was leading off to the right and I wanted to turn it back into the picture. I also wanted to make more of the stone path leading down into the  picture.  I used a 16 x 20 sheet of mounted Pastel Premiere white 400. I thought it would have more texture than the UART that I’ve also got mounted. I did the underpainting with hard pastels and added alcohol. It was very dark and looked fine.

However, once I added soft pastel into the sky, it was completely flat!  I knew  this wasn’t going to work for the buildings and wall. So I brushed off  the sky and added two coats of Colourfix liquid primer over the entire underpainting.  This gave me a great surface to work on (but I wouldn’t do this on a regular basis with purchased papers!). Now when I laid in color in the sky, I got a more irregular layer of color which works better with the texture in the rest of the painting.

I worked from the color photo this time around as I wanted to see the nuanced colors in the buildings and wall, and I liked the colors overall, particularly the cool greens of the distance. The color scheme is a double complement–blue greens and oranges, yellow ochres and violets. I enjoyed putting small pieces of brighter orange into the chim