Poplar en Perigord, #1, Wallis museum grade, 18 x 24

Charcoal lay-in

Here is the 18 x 24 painting based on my favorite of the studies. This was done on Wallis museum grade mounted white paper. I have one sheet left!  I did the under painting with hard pastel and used alcohol on it, forgetting about the potential problems of alcohol on Wallis. It did change the surface a bit, I think, but it was OK. I used my Blue Earth pastels to lay in the colors and the Giraults to soften them and fill in more of the background.  I kept to the colors in the study (or at least tried to!). Given the differences in the surface, the pastel didn’t go on the same way. I resorted to using a lot more strokes, rather than relying on the texture of the surface. But then, this is France and it should probably have a lot of impressionist strokes anyway!

I began the painting with a charcoal and water sketch on the paper to lay out the composition. I didn’t want a lot of charcoal, just wanted to be sure about the composition. Somehow, I forgot to film the underpainting but I used combinations of reds and greens in varying values that provided enough rich color to work over. My main concern was in the flow of shapes, particularly the reds in the foreground, the green shape on the right, and the shape of the mountain in the background, which I later changed.

I’ve included the original color photo so you can see what it looked like in France. I worked from a black and white and found it much more inspiring!  Hope to do the second one tomorrow and see where that one takes me!