Bluebells at Carderrock, 24″ x 18″, Pastel Premiere “Italian clay”

Initial drawing

Partial underpainting, stage 1

Partial underpainting, stage 2

Beggining to paint the bottom

I haven’t posted in awhile but I recently completed another 24 x 18 in my “Local Wonders” series.  Every spring there is a lovely carpet of Virginia bluebells in various areas of VA and MD.  The closest to me is along the Billy Goat Trail at the area called Carderrock. It’s an easy walk and I enjoyed going there with one of my pastel friends.  The overwhelming sense was of soft spring blues and greens, including the river and the water.  My painting is more literal than I might have liked, but I couldn’t figure out what else to do with it.  I decided to work on the “Italian clay” Pastel Premiere rather than UART and didn’t begin with an underpainting.  I began this painting several weeks ago prior to hosting an out of town guest and doing various other things.  The beginning–sky, background hills, water and trees were all done in the first session. I started with hard pastel, didn’t like them. Tried Girault. They didn’t feel right either.  So I used my softer pastels and that seemed to work. That was how the painting looked for several weeks.

When I came back to it last Friday (with an opening that night!), I decided that I really needed an underpainting for the bottom of the picture.  All that light brown was too much! Using hard pastels–a dark blue, browns and greens–I roughed in the basic shapes of the plants and path.  I chose the dark blue because I wanted the painting to be all blues and greens (in addition to the warm earth tones in the path).  I used a wide brush and a lot of alcohol and brushed it down, losing most of my shapes!  But at least it was good and dark.  I then used softer pastels to put the dark blue shadows back in.  When I got to the green plants, I used the Giraults and they were just right. I could loosely fill areas using the sides, then add details with the edges.

I really liked the way the light on the path helps lead the eye into the picture towards the trees and water.  And there was some lovely light hitting the flowers as well.  I used a blue violet Schmincke for the bluebells and where there was light, I added some soft light pink to them. That did the trick!  Before finishing I brought some pieces of green tendrils over some of the flowers.  They still look like they are sitting on top–but that’s what they do!

I’ve never painted the bluebells before. I was worried about the level of detail and the ability to get them in. I have to say that doing the underpainting REALLY helped a lot. I had it mostly done for the opening that night.