Sunlit Field, St. Andre de Double, 12 x 16, Pastel Premier “Italian Clay”

I just gave a three day workshop at Washington ArtWorks and did two demos. The first was for the whole class. I used two different images and the result was less than great!  But then, I decided to do a small demo the next day for several of the participants about beginning with analogous color when confronted with a lot of greens.  I decided to work on Pastel Premiere, because my new member was going to work on that.  I began with just the left part of the painting and began the greens with blues and the warm bush with browns.  I quickly realized that blue was the WRONG color!  This painting is all about warm yellow greens, and of course, the complement is my favorite color of red violet!  It was only when I employed my Ludwig “eggplant” and other red violet pastels, that it began to work.  Then I used a variety of dark and warm greens over the violets.  The biggest challenge was with the purple loosestrife, which is present in the foreground, both in sunlite and in shadow at the bottom left.  I find that a “bright purple” is a REAL challenge!  I began with warm magentas and some warmer colors, then went to my violet row and added some of the warmer violets.  But I was never completely satisfied.  The shadowed part was quite easy–it was the flowers in sunshine that were the problem.

However, my primary goal was to portray the beautiful sunlight hitting the bush and crossing the field.  I built up to the light in the bush gradually, finally moving to the yellowist of yellow greens.  In the background, I used some of the same colors, but then added some pinks/red violets over them to tone them down and keep them from competing.

For the sky, I used a warm green in the upper right, then a brighter yellow for the rest, toned down with the lightest of the yellow Giraults (the sky is all Girault).

Pastel Premiere does not accept hard pastel well, so I quickly moved to Girault and then my soft pastels.  I REALLY enjoyed doing this painting and using the soft pastels, sometimes with a Girault over them (as in the raised grasses in the middle).  It was really fun!

Late Day Light, Coulon 16 x 16 UART 400

Underpainting

Reference photo

I spent a lovely, quiet afternoon at the studio, doing my second painting from our recent trip.  This farm house was up the road a bit from the similar type of farm house that we stayed in.  I took pictures of many of them, but this one really intrigued me because of the side buildings and bushes on the right side of the picture. Much more interesting than just the house.  And the water reflections, of course, also gave it more interest.  I did the underpainting yesterday and chose a really warm yellow green for the sky and a warm green for the water. I used blues and off reds for the bushes and buildings.  I’m finding more and more that I’m just looking for a color with the right value and not worrying very much about what it is!  But I did think about temperature when choosing the sky and water colors.

I wanted this painting to show the glow of the beautiful late afternoon light. I used light blues and greenish blues in the sky, then added a Ludwig light orange above the house on the left side of the painting.  For the trees, I kept to blues and blue greens (no violets!).  The house is a combination of grayed green Giraults and a beige Schmincke.  I wanted to emphasize the light and shadow on the house and went back over it and the windows a number of times. I finally added a warm Schmincke to the second window from left on the top and added blue over some of the others to keep them from being too much alike.  I left out a lot of fence posts, a sign, and a telephone pole. But I did add the speed sign and really like the way it came out, and the fact that it breaks up the large dark bush against the house.

For the water, I went with darker colors and more intense blues at the base.

What I love about France (and Europe in general) is the age of everything and the way the buildings have become a part of the landscape. This house, with its odd side buildings, and it’s typical grayed facade, is a good example.  There is a real soft, earthiness in France, with few hard edges and lovely colors.  It was such a pleasure being there and reliving it!

It was very quiet at my studio today, but just as I finished a man asked to come in and visit. He looked at all the work and fell in love with several of them and I have a feeling he will be back. You never know!

Underpainting

Port du Pave, 20 x 16, UART 400

Reference photo

Here is my first painting since our recent trip to France. I knew when I was taking the pictures that I finally had something I would paint.  We were in a very deserted quiet area of ruined buildings, boats and cars. Adjacent to it was a marina and wildlife preserve which we walked through. I loved the one red boat and took many shots of it from different angles, but this first one was the one I liked best. I loved the way the grasses of differing colors lead the eye to the boat.

The sky was overcast and we had just had a shower. I used blues and violets in the lower part, making it a little lighter at the top. Used a Girault to blend, then added a very light yellow Ludwig near the top to add some light.  This is subtle and may not show well, but it really adds to the painting.

As you can see from the photo, I made the buildings and boat bigger, giving them more prominence in the painting, as I knew I would. I knew I wanted to do a vertical, because I liked the movement of the grasses, but I didn’t want too much grass!

For the buildings, I have to admit to being very influenced by Tony Allain. I used simple strokes and only a few colors.  I purposely did not make the white roof as light as it is in the photo, as I didn’t want to call attention away from the boat.

The challenge at the end was that the red in the boat was isolated color. I “solved”? it by signing my name in the lower left corner, using a cool dark red pencil!  I think it helps.

Model of the show

I just received an image of the models for the show from Aurelio and I wanted to share them with you. In the background you will see Philippe Caillat at his computer. He was there much of the time.  There were paintings from a Canadian artist that never got there. Mine took a month and there were delays in other American’s as well. He took care of it all.  And look at the detail that went into planning the show!  Every painting in miniature in it’s place!  John and I were really astounded.  Philippe is the town pharmacist and we wondered how much time he was able to give to his actual job!

Aurelio said that he values this show above others due to the dedication of the local people and town and I can well understand that. I can’t imagine anything like  this taking place in the U.S.

And each year, the town buys at least one painting for their Musee du Pastel.  Imagine that in the US!!!  I feel very fortunate to have been able to participate and bring more Americans to this very worthy show in France. There have been a number of sales so far and I just hope that some of the Americans will sell as well.

Meditacion, Award-winning painting by Aurelio Rodriguez Lopez

Aurelio with his demos

I promised last week that I would add a post on the demo by Aurelio Rodriguez Lopez, that occurred on Sunday morning.  I didn’t stay for the whole thing, but I got pictures of the portraits in process, and him and his materials and I took notes on what he uses.  As I noted in the last post, what he does is completely different from what I would do for a landscape. But his results are quite amazing.  You can see that from the painting Meditacion, which won one of the two awards.  The background is gold, I think maybe irridescent pastel.  He uses a number of different techniques to create backgrounds for his portraits.  (Ignore the white spot, which is from the camera)

Partially-completed portrait

For the demo, he brought two different portraits which he had begun in workshops.  While I was there, he worked on the portrait of the man. I was very interested to see his pastel boxes, which contained highly sharpened pencils, as well as sticks. He uses pencils and sticks interchangeably, using a variety of brands of pencils with Rembrandt and Girault sticks.  He said that of the 6,000 portraits that he has done in the past 30 years, 90% have been done on Canson MiTeintes, as the two demo pieces were.  He uses a #177 Sepia pencil for his drawing, adding some black and a bit of white to create the initial layer of pastel. He uses a brush to get rid of excess pastel, as well as stomps for blending (all the things I have pooh-poohed over my brief career in pastel!!!). Needless to say, his technique is very exacting and delicate.

While he used to work from life, he now works from photos, reproducing the photo to the size of the painting and laying along side, as you can see in the photo. He uses four stages: 1) drawing, 2) color application, 3) mixing and blending, and 4) recapturing the fine details of the drawing. In the blending phase, he uses a black Conte 3B pencil, which is the “darkest black” to blend into other colors to darken them. He noted his problems of achieving darks (which had been my problem when I was using Rembrandts and Canson).  I think I noted in the last post that he mentioned the Ludwig darks, but I couldn’t imagine him using anything as large as a Ludwig! (Perfect for Tony Allain, however!)

I couldn’t stay for the entire demo as the weather was wonderful and the beautiful French countryside (and my husband) were calling to me!  But meeting him was one of the real treats of this trip. While I know I would never work like this, I do know someone who might.  I may have told you about my friend Karl, who is in a federal prison.  When he first wrote to me, I learned that he was doing portraiture, using Canson, and inexpensive pastels, including a lot of pencils.  I got him to use “better” papers (from my stand point) and softer pastels.  After watching Aurelio’s demo, I felt really guilty!!! I wished that Karl could have been there. I did send him a detailed letter with these images, giving him permission to do whatever he likes!!!

Aurelio’s materials

Paritally-completed portrait with photograph

The main square in St.-Aulaye

Hello Friends, I’m back from France and have just downloaded my pictures of the country and the Pastels en Perigord Salon.  When we drove into town, we found that the streets were festooned with rows of plastic flowers everywhere! Really amazing.  It had to do with a 50 year celebration of l’Occitane.  But there were also banners for the show and an upcoming music festival this weekend. It’s a small town but quite amazing. We arrived last Friday night as they were finishing with the show hanging.  Philippe Caillat (aka Pastels Philippe) is the person who seems to manage it all. He had created a small scale model of the show and had attached small versions of the paintings to each wall in the model. Sorry I didn’t get an image of this!  The show is a maze of white walls. Each artist has 3 paintings and each painting has a light above it. The glass is a real problem, however, particularly for pictures. When they were done we all went behind one of the walls and feasted on melon with prosciutto, pate and bread, pizzas, cheeses, and ice cream bars, washed down with a sweet strawberry wine!  Quite French.

The quality of the show is very high, from the featured artist–Tony Allain of Cornwall–to the jurors and other invited artists.  The juried artists were also very good and I was pleased with our selections.  There were many different styles, from the very loose and gestural, to the very tight and realistic.  I think my two favorites were Tony Allain (gestural) and Aurelio Rodriguez (amazingly realistic!).  I will include a selection of paintings from the show in this post and will include Aurelio’s Sunday morning demo in the next.

As a landscape painter who loves France, I was surprised at how few landscapes there were of the French countryside. Having just looked at my 560+ photos and seeing MANY possibilities, I’m amazed that the French artists don’t do more with it. I guess the Impressionists did it all???  Still …

So here are some of the paintings.  The Achard is very loose, the Gaben-Laurie is left unfinished (ignore the light spots from the glass!) and the Rodriguez is hyper-realism!  I could never do that plastic wrap!!!  But I decided that if I wanted to be more like anyone in the show it would probably be Allain. I loved the way he was able to put in a bright piece of orange to say light on a roof, and a few pieces of white for the clothes on the line. His strokes are perfect.

After the “vernisage” (opening) many of the artists, jurors, and their spouses all went to Aubeterre sur Dronne for dinner outside under the stars.  John and I quickly got a table, which became the anglophon table!  We had Irish, English, and Americans all able to converse.  It was quite lovely.

Two paintings of surf by Nicole Guion-Stamatakis

Paysage du Tarn, Joel Achard

La petite reveuse, by Helene Gaben-Laurie

Wash Day, Tony Allain

From the Mediterranean, Aurelio Rodgriguez Lopez

Two of my paintings at the ArtHamptons show

Happy July 4th!  It’s a cool, overcast day with showers promised, so I’m getting things done after a week and a half up north.  We spent five nights in the Hamptons, in the town of Hampton Bays, while my work was on display at ArtHamptons in Bridgehampton.  We had beautiful weather and spent a lot of time touring around.  I was at the opening reception on Thursday night and spent a little time at the end on Sunday, but otherwise stayed away.  Only two of the six paintings I brought were on display at any one time. You can see the small wall that I had in the picture, and the size of the accompanying work!  The other paintings in this photo are fairly typical of what was on display.  Most of it left me fairly cold.   Mine were the only pastels in the show, and there were very few other landscapes.  Surrealism is really big! Given my proclivity to really beautiful paintings, this was not my kind of show!  But I did sell one painting–Shore House with Loosestrife.  I didn’t see a single gallery that I thought would be worth approaching.  I won’t be doing this again but it was an interesting experience.

Shore House with Loosestrife

Typical seascape in the Hamptons

One thing that has always intrigued me about Long Island is the area of Shinnecock Hills, which the painter William Merritt Chase painted so beautifully in oil and pastel. Fortunately, there is a wonderful show of Chase at the Phillips Gallery with many pastels, and a whole room of Shinnecock landscapes. (His small box of Girault pastels is also on display–a real treat!) He taught at the summer art school there, and his paintings are filled with sunny skies, beautiful clouds and grassy hills with women dressed in white.  Unfortunately, most of what was once Shinnecock Hills is now a humongous golf course.  But one can still get the sense of the place. The photo I’ve included is from a wildlife refuge on Great Peconic Bay.  Here is a website that includes all of Chase’s work: http://www.william-Merritt-Chase.org.

On the way home, we visited the Hill Stead Museum in Farmington, CT, just west of Hartford. This is a WONDERFUL place!  It’s the home of a wealthy couple who bought impressionist paintings at the turn of the century. The house was designed by their daughter, an architect, and everything is exactly as it was.  The collection includes two wonderful Degas pastels and two of Monet’s haystack paintings that literally glow.  On the wall by the stairs are wonderful etchings and drawings by Whistler and others.  I loved looking at one of the Degas pastels–a nude with wash basin.  Beautiful texture and combination of layered pastel with cross hatched strokes.  I noticed this in the Chases as well.  It’s something that I want to experiment with and will include in my fall classes.

So now I am preparing for our last major trip–France!  I am very much looking forward to this trip as I will get to meet an old acquaintance  from high school, who lives in France and paints in pastel, as well as meeting many European pastelists and seeing the great show in St. Aulaye.  We will be on the western edge of the Perigord region, just north east of Bordeaux.  We are staying out of cities completely and look forward to seeing the French countryside and beautiful towns.  I’ll be sure to take a lot of photos and will report back!  Have a wonderful summer.

Blue Ridge Village, 16 x 16, UART 400

Underpainting

Initial stage

I decided to do one studio painting before we head off to the Hamptons and New England next week. This is from one of the photos I took on my trip to Syria, VA several weeks ago. This is the small town of Criglersville, which has a large number of white buildings, all with green roofs.  This being May, there was a great preponderance of green!  I could have changed the roof color, I guess, but I wanted to represent it as it was.  Instead, I decided to work from a black and white photo and do a colorful underpainting.

Compositionally, I had to decide whether to have more background and sky or foreground as I didn’t want the row of buildings to be right in the middle. I decided that the foreground was more interesting and placed them about an inch up from the halfway mark.

I used blues and blue greens for the background mountain and a combination of aqua and very light yellow for the sky. I actually started the background hill lighter than it is, as you can see in the partially completed painting. When I came in today, I decided that the difference between the background mountain and foreground trees was too great. So I had to carefully darken it.  I used a Girault blue and blue green and kept it very soft and impressionistic.

I used warm and cool greens for the trees, but kept them to the more grayed varieties (Unisons, primarily).  For the buildings, I used a number of tinted whites.  The buildings at left were done with yellow, the house in middle with pink, and the barn with some very light blues.  I wanted the house at left to be the primary building and I liked the way the progression of fence posts leads the eye to the house.

I tried to leave some of the undercolor showing in the trees, mountain and grasses. But when I was done, I felt the need for more color. I used a warm red violet to add richer color to the shadowed area of grasses in the lower left, and added some of it to the fence posts.  Then I used a fairly dark red orange Girault to add some small specks of color in the evergreen tree and posts and added more orange to the foreground grasses.  Small changes, but I felt that it really needed it. And I signed my name in red orange!

I don’t expect to do much painting again until Aug. However, next week we will be spending 5 nights in the Hamptons, and I realized this week that I’ll be staying in the Shinnecock Hills region. This is the place painted so often by one of my favorite painters, William Merritt Chase, who just so happens to have a show at the Phillips Gallery in DC.  I hope to get there before we go, and I plan to take some paper and my very small Heilmann box in the hopes of doing a few small paintings. Of course, I doubt that the area is going to bear much resemblance to Chase’s paintings–particularly no women with parasols walking through the fields!  But I can dream.

Hopefully, I ll have something to show for my time when I get back, as well as a report on the Hamptons show.

Evergreens Study, 16 x 12 Pastelbord

For the second painting of day 2, I decided to do a study of two evergreens. The subtlety of light on them was lovely.  I began the drawing of the trees with charcoal, finding it easier to work with for this type of subject matter.  I began the sky with a very warm blue green, then brushed some blue violet on over and worked in some clouds.  This is the other painting for which I don’t have a before image.  In the studio, I did very little. I added a little green to the distant hills, which were too flat. I added some lighter color to the trees in a few places, and I added more detail in the grasses.

Stream Study–Before, 11 x 14, UART

Stream Study–After, 11 x 14, UART

Day 3 was another beautiful sunny day. We decided to start the day painting the Rose River, which flows under the driveway leading up to Graves Mt. Lodge (and there was an amazing amount of traffic!!!).  I was going to do a vertical of the river with sky and trees, but decided the point of the painting should be to paint the water and rocks, with small rapids.  The biggest challenge of the picture was that the values were so close. The only darks and lights were in the rocks and water ripples.  I tried to minimize the background by using Giraults and keeping down any detail.  I decided to make the clump of bushes and rocks coming from the mid-left at the center of interest.  With this in mind, I tried to add as much light to it as possible. But, in the studio, it still seemed dull. The answer was to use soft pastels–Schminckes, Great American and Blue Earth to both the the bush and clump of grass in the lower right.  The pictures don’t look very different, but I do think that the additions improved it.

Graves Mountain View–Before

Graves Mountain View, 16 x 12, Pastel Premiere “Italian clay”

The final painting was done on the porch of our motel unit looking out over the fields to the distant mountains. There was a barn with silo that I particularly liked.  For this painting, I used Pastel Premier, Italian clay and used direct application of pastel with no underpainting.  It was fun to just brush on the color, particularly for the distant hills and I left a little of the paper showing in the upper right.  The primary challenge of this painting was the large amount of green!  It was quite overwhelming.  I began the distant hills with blues and some blue greens, then added light greens over, using nothing but Giraults.  I had to simplify the foreground, removing a large tennis court and adding green grass instead.  When looking at the painting in the studio, the foreground trees look blotchy and the sunlit areas looked like holes! The color was too similar to that of the grassy field. So I focused on the foreground trees, adding more greens and also lightening the grass and adding orange to it.  I’ve also added more green to the distant hills, which were too blue.

And now to politics!  While we were there, my husband wrote to tell me that Syria and Graves Mt. Lodge was featured on the front page of the Washington Post.  Jimmy Graves was interviewed on why he was supporting Donald Trump in a town called “Syria”. Most distressing!  I like the place and the people are very nice. They were also very generous in giving us free use of the common room that had a refrigerator in it.  One of their big fears is ISIS!  But without cell phone or GPS service there, I doubt that ISIS will find them!!!  So, I will forget about Jimmy and remember the wonderful time I had with painting friends.

Last week I spent 3 days painting in the Blue Ridge Mountains with three pastel friends. We had lovely weather in between cold rain and hot and hazy, so we planned it just right!  This past week I spent a day in the studio working on the six paintings that I’d done. I tried to remember to film them before I started working on them, but I wasn’t always successful. So I have 4 of them with before/after images, but I’ll share them all with you. I’ll do this in two postings.

This was my first chance at plein air this year, so none of these is particularly good.  Unlike some people, I rarely consider a plein air piece done until I’ve viewed it in the studio and made some changes. Invariably more light has to be added, or a building needs to be straightened. I do not consider these, or even more serious changes to be a problem in calling them plein air paintings. (But then, I never was a purist!)  My purpose in showing these to you is primarily to explain the changes I made inside.

House in the Woods–Before

House in the Woods–After, 11 x 14, UART

Our first day it was partly cloudy with sun coming and going. We decided to stay on the grounds and I kept looking at a driveway leading to a dark house in the woods. The light was hitting the roof, and as the morning went on, it lit part of the drive and a second roof as well. So it got more interesting as time went on!  Unfortunately, my “before” picture is fuzzy, but you can still see the dark puddles that were in the lane.  I decided that these either had to be lightened or removed. Given that I had added blue sky into the picture (which was really much higher up!), I decided that the puddles should be removed. I also added some light yellow greens to the bushes to the right of the house. No other changes were made to this painting.  When we looked at the paintings on the first day, I was pleased with the values in the painting the strength of the contrasts, so I didn’t want to ruin that.

Afternoon Shower, 14 x 11, UART 400

The second painting of the day was done after a shower.  (Unfortunately, this is one I forgot to film before changing.) We found a covered platform behind a church with a great view of the fields and hills.  I chose to paint a barn and farm buildings, with mown grasses leading to it and hills beyond.  This was one of those times when the sun kept coming out and going in, and the light was constantly changing–the biggest challenge of plein air. When I got into the studio, there were three things that really bothered me about the painting. First was that I had made the right hand side too light-filled.  Secondly, I had a large bush or tree to the right of the horizontal building and it looked like 3 things in a row of equal size.  The third problem was with the mowed grasses at lower right. They were two one-dimensional. My first action was to cool off the field and tree on the right and blur the group of trees at the top of the hill. Then I brushed off the tree in the middle of the picture and added two trees, one in back of the building.  Next, I added more darks and lights to the mowed grasses and lots of squiggly strokes to indicate mowed hay.  I was quite happy with it then. This is probably my favorite of the group.

Farm on Poorhouse Road–Before

Farm on Poorhouse Road–After, 14 x 18, UART 400

The first painting of the second day was done on Poorhouse Road!  I chose a farm building with light hitting the roof and house behind it.  There were two huge trees on either side of equal size.  I decided to make one tree smaller and also to simplify the composition into color shapes.  But it was a struggle!  My initial feeling about this painting was that it was hopeless!  But I decided to see what I could do with it in the studio.  I forgot to film this until after I had brushed the drab green color off of the purple hill in the background. It suddenly became much better and I never touched it again!  Next I worked on the sky, which was rather washed out in the initial version. I added several blues and then added light clouds into it. I started liking the picture more. I then decided that two “lollypop” trees was not a good thing. So I made the one on the left much larger, going off the page and added sky holes.  I added more light to the yellow bush to the left of the forebuilding.  I brushed off the roof of the house and decided to lower it. I also added a cast shadow from the tree, which I never really saw, but which I liked a whole lot!  Then I brushed off some of the many layers on the little red roofed building and simplified it.  I also deleted the two backlit bushes, which didn’t add anything to the picture. Lastly, I added a lot of oranges and pinks in the grasses to warm up the foreground and give more pattern to it.  This is still not great, but it’s better than it was!