We are back from a truly wonderful two week trip to the Dordogne and Lot Valleys in France. The highlight of the trip came early on when John and I went to St. Aulaye to meet my new friend “Pastel Philippe”!  Last year he invited me to participate in their international show of pastels. I sent three paintings and sold one and decided that this is the international show that I would like to continue participating in, primarily because Philippe is such a wonderful person to work with. He is also a truly great painter, particularly of cats! You can see his picture above him.  He is the local pharmacist in a small, lovely town in the northern part of the Perigord region of France. From the outside, the Musee du Pastel is a garage!  But once inside, one sees truly magnificent paintings from all over the world, including the Spanish painter Romero, whose work (I think) is featured in the poster.  What is amazing is that the town of St. Aulaye has purchased the paintings in the Musee. Such dedication to art is rarely seen in this country, sorry to say.  In addition to the tour of the Musee, they took us out to lunch at a lovely restaurant in the country and then we visited a church carved into the stone mountainside.  The Pastel en Perigord show is held biennially now (it used to be annual but was too much). It is run completely by Michel and Philippe. They work very hard and their standards are very high. They want to represent the best of pastel in the world!  I asked about attendance at the show and Philippe said they come from all over and it draws a huge crowd. I can see that I’m going to have to attend one of these days!  It’s held in late July.  I plan to assist by suggesting further US artists who have been recognized with IAPS master circle and/or PSA recognition. I was very happy to be able to play a part in such a special endeavor.  I have over 700 photos of France!  Expect to see a painting or two sometime soon, I hope!!!

Poster for the Pastels en Perigord show in St. Aulaye

Philippe Caillat (aka Pastel Philippe) with his cat painting

Michel Bordas, president of Pastels en Perigord

The Musee du Pastel!

Interior shot of the Musee du Pastel, 1

Interior of the Musee du Pastel, 2

Michel Bordas, me, Monique and Philippe Caillat

I’m back from IAPS (it was wonderful!!!) and I’ve just had time to finish my first studio painting from Chincoteague, VA. We leave for France on Saturday to the Dordogne and a visit with “Pastel Philippe” and a tour of the pastel museum in Saint-Aulaye.  I’ll put a report on the blog when I return. Back to the painting, I did this using 3 different black and white photos. One featured the path, another the trees with light, and another the distant trees. I printed them out and worked on several charcoal sketches, using white conte to highlight. Then did the composition for the painting based on the sketch.  I did a color study using a re-purposed small Pastelbord. The surface was a lot darker than the very gold surface that I created for the painting. I envisioned using red violets and warm greens (the colors I saw when there), which are evident in the color study. However, when I got to the painting, the gold surface made me use blue violets in the stand of trees, with red violets and orange brushed on top to indicate the light. I was pleased with this and with the lighter violet trees in the background, particularly as I wanted a lot of yellow in the sky.  For the sky, I started with a light blue green in the upper left and moved towards yellow as it got towards the center, then back to the blue green on the far right with a cooler yellow on top. I let some of the gold show through and liked the effect.  I envisioned using yellow oranges for the grasses, given that I had moved to the blue violet. However, I picked up various reds and used those and really liked them!  I then added some warmer color to the right to show the light hitting them. My biggest challenge was the path. I liked the way it came out in the color study but I was concerned that it not be the center of interest. I began with yellow green and blue greens. It related to the sky but not to the other grasses. So today, I added a lighter color of pink over the blue greens, then added some yellow ocher over the yellow greens.  I felt that this toned it down and didn’t fight with the area of trees against sky that I really cared about.  Compositionally, I added another bush just above the far left bush in order to lead the eye back to the right towards the open trees, and I made the line of the path straighter to lead the eye as well.

I’m happy at this point. I really loved doing this as I felt that I was creating a “painting.” If you have read the interview with Duane Wakeham in the latest Artists Magazine, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I liked having the ability to create my own composition and color and to keep evaluating it as to what it needed in the way of changes with both composition and color. I hope to do a series of paintings from Chincoteague similar to this. I’m also very happy to be working on the Rives again and i think that it’s the perfect surface for this type of painting.

I showed my Georgetown and Capitol Hill pictures yesterday to several art consultants and plan to make giclee reproductions of them. They were both very enthusiastic about the series. Those paintings are intended for the commercial market, this type of painting is intended for galleries and the personal home market. I’m happy to have finally come up with a distinction between my paintings and the ability to work with both markets in mind.

Marsh Walk, 20 x 24, BFK Rives and Colourfix Liquid Primer

Charcoal sketch

Color Study, 10 x 8 or recoated pastelbord

I’ve just spent some time in the studio working on these two plein air paintings that I did on Wednesday during a brief trip to Chincoteague, VA.  For those not familiar with this area, Assateague Island National Seashore is a very large barrier island along the Delmarva Penninsula that separates the mainland from the Atlantic Ocean. Chincoteague is both a town and a National Wildlife Refuge that is in Virginia. It’s a favorite get-away for many in the DC area, but it was John’s and my first trip.  We will go back!  We lucked out with a clear, beautiful day the one full day of the trip. But the photos from the first, more muggy day are actually best.  The most beautiful spot is Snow Goose Pond that has a drive around it, only open to cars after 3:00.  John dropped me off with my gear and I spent two happy hours doing these two paintings.  They aren’t great, but I really enjoyed looking at and trying to capture the multitude of color in the marshes, grasses, and distant trees. Of course these pictures lack the many birds and ponies that one sees there.  They may appear is some studio pieces. I tried to focus first on composition and some of my changes today had to do with the composition, adding a little more water in the Marsh painting to open it up, and changing the shape of the trees in the Grasses picture to make them more interesting. I tried to remember the color and change it only to match my memory.  My photos are amazingly dull!  But one woman came by and said “I’ll bet you are having fun with all this color” so it wasn’t must my imagination. Anyway, I was so happy that I’d brought my easel and pastels.  I may try to do a painting this week as I get ready for IAPS.

Chincoteague Marsh, 14 x 11, UART 400

Chincoteague Grasses, 14 x 11, UART 400

Fall Apple Tree, 16 x 12, pastelbord

Initial charcoal drawing and photo

Toned board with pan pastel and charcoal wetted with a brush

Yesterday I spent a good part of the day in my studio doing a commission. The request was for a painting of an old apple tree that had been in the client’s mother’s yard, but now gone. I was sent 4 photos, all rather dull, with surrounding trees, fence and houses.  I had NO idea what I was going to do!!! So I started with my favorite of the photos and drew with charcoal on newsprint to try to capture the flow of the branches, which is what the customer loved.  I really wanted to find a way to keep the background abstract and suggestive as it did nothing for the tree!  I decided to play a bit and started by toning the white board with watercolor-a mix of violet and orange that produced a nice warm rust color.  Then I got out my pan pastels, which I basically never use, and roughed in the fence in violet and put some green in the sky. But it wasn’t doing much and I didn’t know where I was going with this. So I next drew in the tree with charcoal and added water to it. Of course, now, I had all these little branches and I realized that the color underneath them was totally unhelpful!  But I proceeded to paint the trunk and major branches of the tree, using a dark grayed violet. I couldn’t decide where I was going with the color!  I wanted to have some red apples, so tried using a red-green palette, using my cool red and turquoise Blue Earth pastels. I didn’t like it. I switched back and forth from soft to Giraults, then back to soft. I really thought this painting was going to end up in the sink. At one point, I took all the violet Giraults out of my corn meal box and put them away, only to get them out again and realize that this was the perfect color!!!  What a surprise!  When I put the soft violet into the background trees and mixed yellow into the sky with my fingers, I suddenly had some beautiful atmospheric effects. I used the violets of the “fence” to provide a colorful background. When I added the yellow leaves and red/orange apples, the colors really came alive. The client was very happy with the painting and so was I.

I spent a hot day in my studio today working on another alley picture from Capitol Hill. This one is from a lovely walk in early spring. I loved the color of the garage at right, the many signs on the telephone pole, and the color and odd shape of the tall building. Plus, the shadows, of course.  The pole was problematic as it is almost right in the middle, but I couldn’t move it and maintain the light and shadows on the signs. So I left it as it is. It’s not quite centered!  The color scheme here is green, red orange, and blue violet. I used all of these colors in the shadows and dark places as well as in the telephone pole.  You can see the colors I started out with in the underpainting. They really helped me and there are little pieces that show through here and there. The sky color was quite unusual, but I thought it would relate to the color of the garage.

This is the third of my alley pictures in my Insider’s Washington series. I just picked up the 6 framed Georgetown Canal pictures and they look great!

No Parking, 20 x 24, UART 400

Underpainting

Went out yesterday afternoon with a group of my pastel friends to paint at the Sugar Loaf Winery on Comus Road. We have one mountain in Montgomery County–Sugar Loaf. It’s a small mountain but you can see it from many angles. And we have one winery, very near the mountain. It’s a pleasant place to be as there is plenty of off-road parking. Most of the others chose to paint a rather boring gray barn that they did wonders with colorwise.  I chose to pick and choose from the trees and bushes across the street. I particularly liked the large tree going off at an angle to the left with a brilliant yellow green bush growing up against it. I opened up the scene with a stretch of grass and more sky. There were actually all trees just to the right of the big one!  But that’s what we can do outside–look at the landscape and see what will work as a composite!  I’m so happy to have this group of wonderful people to paint with. Most are current or former students who live in the area. I got it started, then am asking each of them to organize an outing since I won’t always be here.  Kathy organized this one and it was great. We enjoyed a lovely bottle of rose and cheese and crackers after a successful paintout.

Spring Greens, 12 x 12, Pastelbord

Painting at the Sugar Loaf Winery

Val Fry, Sunny Alsup, Lindsay Leggin, Kathy Edwards, and Carol Greenwald

Here is my latest studio painting. I began this painting on my birthday and had a wonderful time with it.  It’s a grouping of several types of flowering trees. One was definitely a regular apple tree, the other I think must be crabapple. It was quite amazing!  I’m sharing the underpaintings with you and thought I’d talk about the surface and color choices for the underpainting.  I didn’t change the composition or color scheme for this painting. My main challenge was dealing with the large amount of detail.  So I decided it was time to return to the Reeves paper, which I have enjoyed working on so much. It turned out to be perfect!  I applied two coats of liquid primer, toned with sienna and umber (you can see the color on the upper right of the underpaintings where there was no pastel added). I did an underpainting using Holbein sticks, which I’ve found to be quite useful for this purpose.  Given the complexity of the subject matter, I decided to go with the local color and not the opposite. It might have been nice to have green under the red, but I found it a lot easier having mapped out the reds ahead of time.  Remember that an underpainting is there to help you! For the grass, however, I used several oranges as this was relatively straightforward.

In applying the greens and reds of the foliage, I used primarily soft pastels. I find that they work better on this surface than the Giraults.  I did a lot of “hitting” the pastel against the paper to leave small marks. I really liked how the surface allowed the undercolors to show through.  The fence was probably the most difficult part.  It’s going at several angles and in the far left, it’s just wire. I thought about adding more fence posts or slats, but didn’t want to cover up the grass and decided to go with it as it was.  I added a hint of the wire, which I think you can see.  I mainly loved the angle of it and light hitting the back side.

Yesterday I entered this painting, Spring Stream and another in the PSA show.  It’s getting a lot harder to get into it, but I’m giving it my best shot!

Spring Apples, 20 x 24, BFK Reeves with Colourfix Liquid Primer

Underpainting with alcohol

Underpainting before alcohol

Spring Stream, 20 x 24, UART 400

Underpainting

I have just finished this painting, which I began on Saturday morning. We had open studios at Washington ArtWorks and they asked me to do a demo. So I decided that my demo would be of the underpainting, which I’ve included.  I chose to use all warm colors under the greens. I went back and added the dark blue violet on the left side, as the underpainting didn’t seem to have enough darks in it.  I then worked on the painting in my studio all weekend, talking to visitors about the process. Finished it today with more time for complete concentration.

The composition is pretty true to the original photo, but I’ve added the dogwood and the dandelions in the front.  In the photo, the greens are all the same, so I worked primarily from the black and white photo–I had both that and the color but the B&W was at eye level.  I let small pieces of the reds show through and found it to be a big help in the background.  I really enjoyed working on this painting, something with a lot more detail than I often do.

Red Barn, Boyds, 12 x 12 Pastelbord

I went out to paint this afternoon on a cold, cloudy day, along with six friends of mine. We went to a lovely old farm in Boyds, MD, at the invitation of a friend of my husband’s who is renting there.  We stood on a windswept hill overlooking a large farm pond and three barns beyond the trees that are part of the property. I was the only one to paint the barn–I always go for the buildings!  I decided to use a 12 x 12 board for a change and liked the way the composition worked with it.  Rather than looking for graphite, I opened my box of hard pastels and began by using a blue hard pastel stick, using varying amounts of pressure. Then added alcohol to make a wash. Over this I added color, using green under the red and reds under the green.  The barn was some distance away and in front of it were a number of trees in early spring foliage. I loved the curve of the tree in lower right.  The roof of the barn and shed were a cool green that I think I captured fairly well.  I ltried to give a feeling of there being some sunlight on the silo and barns.

Not a masterpiece, but it was good to be outside with friends facing the challenges of painting in the elements again.  Next time we are thinking about a local winery!  If not to paint there, at least it would be a great place to end up!

I spent the weekend working on a 20 x 24 complicated stream scene which I hope to finish tomorrow and share with you. Hope you are all enjoying spring.  

Underpainting

Happy Spring!  I am no longer teaching my regular classes and am in the process of getting ready for upcoming workshops and thought I would let you know what I’ve been up to.

Next week I fly to Massachusetts where I will visit with my mother and give two one-day workshops for the Pastel Painter’s Society of Cape Cod. This is part of their “Winter Blahs” series of workshops, which is a wonderful opportunity for their members: both students and teachers.  This will be the third time I’ve given one of these workshops and I always find them very enjoyable.  This one will be on the use of intuitive color and will be a warm up for my IAPS workshop in June!  After much searching, I finally found an appropriate photo that I could turn into black and white that gives many opportunities for color exploration. In preparation for the workshops, I’ve done a total of 7 color studies and a 12 x 16 painting!  But I’m not sharing any of this with you because some of you are in the workshops!  I may be so sick of this photo at the end of the weekend that I’ll want to find a different one for IAPS!  Will see. But I’m looking forward to seeing some of you on the 18th or 19th on the Cape.

Here’s a product update.  Some of you know that I’ve purchased panels of mounted UART and Fisher paper from Pro-Art Panels.  I always bought the paper mounted on foam core, but last fall decided to spend a little more and try the harder board that they also offer.  Three of the panels were fine.  But after doing an extensive drawing on one, the board started to warp into an impressive arc!  I tried putting PVA size on the back and placing it under magazines.  Nothing worked.  I also had a board in the same batch where the paper came completely apart from the mounting surface.  After many months of procrastination, I finally got around to sending these two back with a note.  Last week I received a phone call from Ed Morris.  He explained that he is the artist, the business is his son’s.  We had a lovely talk and they sent me not only the two UART replacements, but also a UART board on a thinner surface they are trying out, and a board with the 400 Pastel Premiere.  This was very generous of them.  They are the only ones who provide 16 x 20 and 12 x 12 (I think) mounted boards and these are two of my favorite sizes.  I will use the UART with thinner board when I start painting again and let them know how I like it.  Meanwhile, I do encourage you to purchase mounted paper from this company.  Dakota does not supply 16 x 20 mounted boards and this is one of my favorite sizes. I suggested to Ed that they consider doing 20 x 24s as well.

I am looking forward to getting outside to paint this spring. Right now there isn’t much color but it will come very quickly. I’ve formed an informal group of painters that I hope will be able to paint together. It’s not a class and I’m not in charge!  I’m asking one member to take a month and select a spot and get us organized.  I hope to be leading a paintout on April 27th or thereabouts in Boyds, MD.  The first paintings outside are always a struggle for me, but the more I do the better I get. So I am determined to do more this year!  I will share them with you.

My other major project is what I’m calling “The Insider’s Washington”.  After doing my 6 paintings of the canal in Georgetown, I realized that I had to do something different with them. They aren’t the typical lovely landscape or sunset that many people like to buy, but I’ve received great comments on them. Fortunately, there will be a Professional Art Buyer’s Breakfast at Washington ArtWorks on June 9th (the day after I fly back from IAPS!).  I am hoping to market this series and my new alley series under the collective title of “The Insider’s Washington”  I’m calling it “100% politically neutral”!!!  I plan to either make reproductions or license the images so that reproductions can be made. I will only make reproductions for these paintings, not the others that I do and sell through galleries and my studio.  On the whole, I am not in favor of a lot of giclee reproductions. I want to sell originals!  But for series like this, that might look nice in a restaurant, or hotel, I think the reproductions are the way to go.  So I’m excited about this.

Yesterday we had a lovely warm sunny day and I took the metro to Capitol Hill.  I spent an hour touring the alleys and took a lot of photos.  I think I now have the material to do more alley paintings and have a series of 6 alleys to accompany the Georgetown series.  After that, who knows!  My plan is to initially print out the photos in black and white and do drawings to see where I can go with them. Then I’ll think about the color and where I want to make changes. In the photo below, you’ll see that most everything is white. This gives the opportunity for some interesting mixed-color neutrals that I might play with.  We’ll see!  I want to give myself maximum flexibility to enable the creation of interesting paintings.    That’s it for now. Hope you are all enjoying spring.

Reference photo