I found time to paint in my studio on Sunday and Monday and decided to work on a picture from Mattapoisett, after just returning from a visit to my mother. My friend Sarah Brown Miquelle and I painted “this” scene last Wednesday. It’s in quotes, because it didn’t look like this!  It was all green and the resulting photograph was really boring. The trees were all a uniform dark, dull green, and the marshes all the same lighter green. I really liked the composition and I need fall pictures for my galleries, so I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to work from a black and white photo.  The underpainting was all warm colors. I used warm pinky-reds in the sky and let a little of it show through. There are pieces of red in the foreground bushes, which represent the red poisin ivy that was actually there!  And I followed Sarah’s lead and made the sail red, instead of blue.  It was fun to explore fall colors again, even though now, the temperature is hotter than it’s been all summer!

For my friends on the Cape and that area, I’ve been invited to give a one day “winter blahs” workshop in early April for the Pastel Painters Society of Cape Cod. It’s going to be a workshop on working from black and white photos.  It will be a good opportunity to test out the one day workshop I’ll be giving at IAPS.  (I did one before on the Cape using B&W, but that time I supplied the same photo to everyone. This time it will be up to the participants to chose a good photo.)  I’ve added the color photo so you an see the difference.

Color photo, Town Landing, Mattapoisett

Quiet Cove, 16 x 20 Pastelbord