Autumn Oranges, Swain’s Lock, 18″ x 24″, UART 320

Underpainting

Orange branches lightly noted

Background trees and water being added

I’m on vacation!  I have a week off before my last week of zoom classes and I’m spending a good part of it painting. Most of what I’ve done this fall has been for the classes and now it’s time to paint for myself!  We’ve had a beautiful fall and I’ve had several lovely walks on the Canal and in Rock Creek Park.  I started taking horizontal pictures of varying colored leaves flowing across the picture and decided to try something different: horizontals.  So here is the first and maybe the best of the photos.  It’s from Swain’s Lock on the C&O Canal where the towpath opens up to views of the river and various small islands. It was a glorious walk!

But it was a difficult painting!  There are many layers and complexities but the two dominant beach trees, along with smaller twisting trees gave a basis to the composition.  I also liked the triangular shape of the water.  For the underpainting I used some of my favorite Caran d’ache hard pastel colors–a lovely blue and green in the trees and the olive browns in the backgroud, with yellow green in water and sky.  I loved this!  Then I decided to take one orange pastel and mark in the shapes of the branches.  I thought about stopping at this point!  But you know that’s not me!  It really reminded me of something one of the Canadian Group of Seven might have done.  Looking at this underpainting really inspires me to do more with these colors!

Anyway, I began with the background trees and water, using neutral and soft violet Giraults to provide a very light layer of color.  I used a Ludwig blue green for the water, with several darker ones around the tree on the right.  Then I hit the Blue Earth pastels.  The trees are a combination of violets and neutrals from the “Nearly Neutral” box.  But I did add some very dark Ludwig (maybe it’s Eggplant) into the trunks to give them more weight.  I used my boxes of orange, violet, and earth green Blue Earths, along with various other soft pastels to creat the leaves and greenery.

I had to add more to the orange branches to make the stand out from the business on the right.  There was a line of bright yellow leaves on the right which I put in at first and then toned down, deciding that it detracted from the oranges.  For the leaves at right, I used a combination of orangey browns with a warm green and grayed yellow green on top.  There is also a dark red in some places.

I worked from my IPAD mounted on a tripod that I got for teaching. It works really nicely and keeps me from print the color image–which would be flatter.  I do print the black and white to aid in the initial drawing, however.

Not sure what I’ll tackle next but if I’ll wish you all a happy AND SAFE Thanksgiving this year.  Not the time for family gatherings, sadly.  But we still have much to be thankful for.  I’m particularly thankful for the 21 wonderful students who took my classes this fall and went through all the technological challenges with me so good naturedly! We had a wonderful time together.   I’ll be teaching again in the winter and welcome people from anywhere!  I currently have a friend from Massachusetts in my classes.  As long as you can deal with the time zone, you are welcome!  If you are interested, write to me at; jeanhirons48@gmail.com.