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.