Morning Walk in a French Village, 20″ x 16″, Pastel Premiere 400

Detail of wall

This is my latest painting. I began it on unmounted white 400 pastel premiere as an experiment. I want to do some new paintings for the Pastels en Perigord show since I am one of the jurors. I didn’t know whether I’d really like this one and decided to do it to have something to paint.  I used watercolor to begin with as an underpainting. It was too light AND it warped the paper. But I carried on. And I decided that I liked the surface and promptly ordered 5 mounted boards from ProArt Panels.  I’m including a detail from the wall at lower right. I added hard pastel and alcohol to the dark areas and loved working in this area. The grit of the paper is quite lovely and allows for very light brushing of color over the underpainting. I used 99% Giraults in this!  The only soft pastel is the salmon color in the roofs and lit grasses on the wall at left. I really enjoyed painting the background with a combination of warm and cool greens and blues.

This is the town of Crayssac, which is near Cahors in the valley of the Lot River. A very lovely area and no where near as touristy as the Dordogne. The morning and evening light in the town was really beautiful.