Rock Pines, 16 x 20, Pastel Premiere

Underpainting before alcohol

Underpainting with alcohol

Here’s another painting from my October series. I needed something to do this week!  I have one more, which will be a demo for my Monday class. This one was different from the others I’ve done as it includes more trees, skies, and distant water. Not such a “portrait” of the rocks as the others. I began with a vague idea of where I’d go with the color. Used blue greens in the underpainting. I started with the sky and put a light cool blue in with clouds. Instinctively, I picked up grayed red violets and warm neutrals and it was all over!  I had originally thought I might simplify the trees on right into a single mass of value, (note the underpainting) but once the underpainting was complete, I realized it was much too big. So instead, I worked with values and temperature to make it recede and create more interest.  I started the large mass behind the left side with grayed red violet, then added subtly darker and lighter strokes to indicate branches. In the photo there is a large evergreen behind the smaller pines (?) which I left out. But I decided to add some green into the background to suggest a distant pine and connect the greens to the orange leaves. One of the last things I did in the water was to add aqua just to the right of the furthest rock and this really made it!  I particularly like the dark green bush at left. I found several greens that were just a little lighter than the dark and I liked the subtle effect of it.  This is far from being my favorite from this series, but I enjoyed doing it.