Hard pastel underpainting

Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railway, 16″ x 20″, UART 400

This is a painting from last summer’s trip to Maine. It’s one I’ve been wanting to do for some time. It’s a still life, as it’s about the rail cars with light and shadow on them.  I knew that I wanted to do an underpainting with warm under cool, etc., but I spent a lot of time on the drawing.  So I went to the local art store and bought much smaller brushes than I normally use to do the rail cars at the left.  This worked pretty well and I didn’t lose the drawing.

Colorwise, the painting was a challenge because of the large amount of red on the right.  Also the middle car with the lettering was not the same blue green as the first two cars, but actually a darker, truer green.  But I couldn’t find a color that worked (and I DO have a lot of pastels!) There are little bits of red in the left part of the train, a smoke tower and rust spots, but it’s still a lot of red on the right.  I did like the fact that there was a piece of pink in light and shadow, which also helps with the red, but I’m still not sure it is balanced enough.

I simplified the background, putting in some trees in violet, then some soft green over. And I added some very light yellow to the sky to give a dynamic quality to it.  But the real problem was the lettering!  It was really hard fitting all those letters in! I began by painting in the green in the upper part of the car, then put the letters in, resting my hand on the unpainted lower part. In the photo they are much more compact than this, but this was the best I could do.  Putting in the letters and numbers on the other cars was quite easy, by comparison.

The cars are sitting in a “railway museum” in Belfast, Maine–a field full of old train cars. I think that this is a happy, if nostalgic, picture.  And it was one I really enjoyed painting.