Graphite drawing on 11 x 14 400 grit UART

Hard pastel underpainting sprayed with workable fixative

First applications of soft pastels

I have some rare time to paint at home today and tomorrow and decided to do a picture that is something I haven’t done much of lately–buildings and a truck!  We were in Frederick, MD last Tues. dropping off pictures for a show and I took pictures along the canal. I particularly loved this back alley scene that included a roofing truck and buildings in different planes.  There was a lot of careful drawing required for this, so I decided that I didn’t want to do a wet underpainting.  This is the first time I’ve done a dry underpainting on the light UART (I’ve done it on Wallis Belgian mist). You can see that I left a lot of the paper showing through.  The buildings have a lot of warm browns and reds in them and I decided to begin with cool blue greens in the hard pastels.  I sprayed it pretty heavily to be sure that the colors wouldn’t mix and become muddy.  I used my Terry Ludwig vibrants for the reds in the building at right and they were just right. Most of this is, of course, not yet done.  But I thought it would be nice to give more of a step-by-step demo; something I haven’t had time for lately.  I have no idea how this will turn out, but so far, I’m liking it and the process.