Under a Gibbous Moon, 16″ x 12″ Pastelmat

I painted in the studio on Sunday with two of my working students and I decided to paint from a cell phone image that I took in Bedford, PA last Nov. I loved the lines in it and the position of the church and moon.  I decided to use a sheet of the dark charcoal colored pastelmat (I get the pads and never use this color!). It was quite perfect for the subject.  In the photo, everything from the mountain down was a charcoal gray color. I made more hint of light on the church and used various violets, along with greens in the road, mountain, and foliage.  I wasn’t sure what to do about the trees, and thought I’d put them in first. But it wasn’t going to work. So I did the entire sky first, using various blues and light orange and yellow. The trees went on over quite easily but I tried not to overdo them. I added the car in the road and tried to give the sense of head and tale lights–not sure how successful that is. There was a car parked instead of moving that I used as a model.

I didn’t do any finger-blending–you really can’t with Pastelmat!  But I found that Ludwigs went on beautifully on the surface.

I’ve been teaching about surfaces and textures this week in my classes and it was fun to show the afternoon farm scene and this one as two paintings on very different surfaces and how well I thought each worked.

I’m back to using the resurfaced pastelbord for the painting I started today. Really DO prefer texture in most cases.