Leaf Shadows, C&O Canal, 16″ x 12″, Pastelmat “charcoal”

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Here is maybe the last painting of the year (but maybe not!).  I sold the first painting that I did of the red leaves at the canal, so I decided to do another.  This one is more straight on and features the shadows of the leaves.  My friend Sandy pointed them out to me when I met her walking on the canal and I hope she won’t be upset that I’ve done them now twice–you should do them too, Sandy!

After the last one, where I had to do so much dark underpainting, I decided this time to try working on a dark surface.  I chose a “charcoal” sheet of Pastelmat. I love this surface, which is smooth but really rich and allows for real detail.  And I liked the color because it wasn’t completely black.  I really like beginning with my darks, so I have a hard time with black.  But having the relatively dark background helped a lot.

But I’m so used to doing underpaintings!  It was a bit of a challenge.  I began with a rough drawing using pastel pencil.  Then used the sides of hard pastels to lay in various colors.  After that, it was all Girault until the end.  Stage 1 is primarily the hard pastel. I used darker and cooler colors, in general, than what I was seeing.

In stage 2 I worked on the rock with leaves and shadows. I had a really hard time with the shadows but discovered something quite amazing.  As you can see from Stage 1, I started with a dark block of color.  But I found I really couldn’t use this to develop the reflections, so I went over it with light pastel (I may have brushed out the dark first).  Then, I added the dark shadows on top.  It worked beautifully!  This paper really IS amazing!

In Stage 3 I worked on the top of the painting and the reflections in the water, which were more difficult than some others I’ve done.  I used various greens and a little violet for the rock.  The top was rather complicated and difficult to make out.  There are several rocks covered with leaves and vines.  I tried to simplify it a bit and just lay in color, then added the crevices in the rocks and the yellow leaves over them.

My final applications were of soft pastel, using Schmincke reds in the leaves and greens in the water.

This was a more difficult picture for me as I don’t normally work in this way. But it was fun to challenge myself and good to try something different.  And I think that it was the appropriate choice for the subject matter, rather than an underpainting.

Happy New Years to you all!