Another snow storm is hitting here and going to Eastern Massachusetts as well.  I did a demo for my Wednesday class yesterday and decided that a picture from my June walk in Mattapoisett would be appropriate! This is the old Decas Bros. cranberry bog, which is now part of the Mattapoisett Land Trust. It’s a wonderful area to walk and film.  I wanted to include the original photo but I can’t find it in my file!  And, I forgot to film the underpainting, but I’ll explain what I did.  First, the composition. I left out a large evergreen tree on the right side that didn’t add to the composition, and also omitted background trees on the left side. I also made the foreground bushes larger.  There were flowers at back left, but very few in the foreground, so I new I would add more.

I was doing a first time underpainting demo for one of my new students, as well as reacquainting my other students with the reasons why I do an underpainting. For me, it becomes a road map, and is essential to the creative process.  Underpaintings create value shapes that define the composition and they can provide interesting color to work against.  For this one, I chose two values of orange hard pastel for the sky and an aqua for the foreground path.  I chose not to do any underpainting for the trees, leaving them as just charcoal.  I then used a dark blue, a blue green, and a warm green to lay in the bushes and a sienna for the foreground grasses.  (In the photo, the foreground grasses are a very light green with light red violet grass heads.)  The colors in this painting are an analogous palette with green in the middle, extending to blue green and blue on one side, and yellow greens, yellows, and some orange on the other. I found it pleasing to work with.

The trees were the biggest challenge.  I wanted to keep them relatively light, but until I added some dark blue, they didn’t come alive. I did  a lot of going back and forth with sky and trees and was just as happy that I hadn’t done an underpainting of the trees. The underpainting in the road, however, really was helpful.  I left a number of pieces of aqua showing and liked the effect. I also left a little of the orange peaking through in the sky.  The small flowers in the foreground were added with very soft small pieces of Schmincke.  I really enjoyed doing this demo and reliving my lovely walks there last June.  Now for some tulips while the snow is falling very heavily!

Bog Flowers, 11 x 14, UART 400

Charcoal lay-in