Bantam River,, 20″ x 24″, Pastel Premiere med. grit white

Compositional lay -in with dark blue NuPastel

Background trees, sky, and left side

Right bushes and tree done

Water lillies drawn in

I haven’t posted in awhile.  I went to New England at the end of June and got a lot of wonderful shots of marshes and wetlands, both on sunny days and rainy.  I’ve complete 4 paintings, but the most recent has been a game changer for me!  I’m back to working on 20 x 24, my favorite size. And instead of working quickly on rough surfaces without the benefit of photos, I’ve done the exact opposite.  I’m working on Pastel Premier white medium grit (which doesn’t have as much grit as I thought).  But I decided to work very slowly and more thoughtfully, with the help of a photo and some compositional changes.  And I love what I’m doing!

I thought I’d show you some of the progression of pictures that I took.  I really loved the photo, for the most part, except for the large area of water on the left side.  I was trying to figure out how to make it more interesting and realized that I could extend the water lillies over the the left, to help lead the eye into the picture and up into the bushes and tree.  When I did the initial lay-in with hard pastel, I indicated some of this.

I started with the background trees, rather than the sky.  I wanted to do this to try to get the values right.  I used soft pastels in cool greens and a medium value violet.  Then I put in the sky with a Girault violet.  I loved the way it went on so smoothly and flat.  I used my soft Blue Earth pastels for the clouds.  As a matter of fact, this painting is done almost exclusively with Blue Earth and Girault.  But there’s a lot of Ludwig Eggplant as well!  I was really worried about the lack of tooth in the paper, but it worked really nicely, as long as I began with the Giraults.

When I started working, I realized that I wanted to take my time with this painting and enjoy it.  For the greenery I started with the soft, then used dark warm and cool green Giraults to moosh it around.  This was really fun and very sensual!  I LOVED doing this and decided that this is how I want to keep working.

So I completed the left side, then moved to the right and the trees and then lay in the reflections of the trees.  Creating the dark reflections and light water ripples overlaying them was a challenge, but I used the Giraults for this.  Then I drew in the lillies so I’d know where I wanted them.  I added a few flowers but didn’t want to over do it with that.  It’s not about them.

The most exciting part was putting the light clouds into the sky and adding some of it to the water.  I added more as I went a long and tried not to over do it.  The very last thing I did was to add some dark red violet into the greens in small pieces and it looks really nice.

(Note that the photo doesn’t do this painting justice.  It’s not quite as deep violet as it appears.  Friends saw both the original and photo and agreed with me. But it’s the best I can do at the moment.)

This painting is of the Bantam River in Litchfield, CT, in the northwest corner of the state. It rained off and on the entire time we were there and we were very lucky that we got walks in without getting wet.  I think it had started to rain when I took this picture!

I’ve decided to work with the themes of marshes, wetlands, clouds, and water for some time.  This makes me happy and these places are SO beautiful, in sun and rain!

I realize that we are fortunate here in MD not to be having the extreme heat of the southwest or the floods of the north.  July and August are a good time to stay in an paint!  Expect to see more.