Initial charcoal drawing

Charcoal with water

Underpainting before alcohol

Underpainting with alcohol

We had Open Studios weekend this past weekend and I always like to work on a fairly large painting during that time.  During a trip to Pennsylvania two weeks ago, I had taken a picture of a lovely young steer who was looking at me, with farm yard behind him.  I fell in love with this guy and I did a 9 x 12 drawing that came out quite nicely.  I decided to double it and make it a 24 x 18. I spent all of Friday night trying to draw the steer on my paper.  People came in and gave me advice and I kept erasing and changing.

On Saturday morning, I decided it was time to scrap this idea. I had taken a walk at Violette’s Lock on the C&O Canal on Thurs. afternoon and i had a picture I thought had real potential. (My husband didn’t think so!)  So I went to the studio early and erased the drawing. (If you look at the initial drawing, you can still see a little of him on the lower right side.  It would have been a terrible composition!)

Not having done a drawing or any studies, I decided to work loosely. I took compressed charcoal and drew in the trees and shadows of the towpath.  I then applied water to this. It was SO freeing after the difficulty of drawing an animal!  I then added the underpainting and I lightly brushed on the alcohol with a wide brush moving from top to bottom. It worked really well.

The reason I took the photo was that I saw the potential of the green bushes catching the light. In the photo, these were smaller and much less pronounced–and right in the middle of the picture. I expanded them and liked the shape and I was pleased how well it came out in the underpainting.  As visitors came in at various stages, they could clearly see where I was going with the painting.

I have to say that doing this painting was sheer joy!  But I had some challenges, primarily with the towpath and its shadows.  Getting the values right was not easy. The shadows were darker in the grassy areas than on the dirt path. And I was looking at my IPAD, which is a squarer format, and making it into an elongated 24 x 18.  But it worked.

For this painting, I used a lot of Henri Roche pastels.  I won a set last year and decided they would work nicely in this painting. They are highly pigmented and soft but not buttery.  The orange pieces in the trees are all Roche. However, for the light greens, I used Unisons and softer pastels, which worked better.

One of the last things I did was to add light values of aqua into the dirt towpath, and a darker turquoise in the shadowed area of the grasses at bottom. I liked this a lot.

Someday I might try to do my steer. We’ll see!