I’m sharing with you this week’s demos for my two classes. I didn’t have my camera and don’t have pictures of the underpaintings, unfortunately, but I’ll discuss them.  The one on the left is today’s demo.  I decided to use local color in the underpainting, using colors of hard pastels that were a little darker and duller, but that would provide a good undercolor of similar hue.  I used a violet and aqua for the rocks.  Then I did the entire first pass using Giraults.  Finally, I went back to the soft pastels for the yellow bush and colors in the rocks.  I think this is the more successful of the two paintings.  The composition was fairly straightforward and getting the water and reflections was not too difficult. I did everything in a vertical stroke to begin with, then used some horizontals and diagonals to get the surface of the water.

The second painting (on the right) was done on Monday. In the photo, the bush in foreground was all green. I decided to turn it into fall colors to give it more life.  I really liked the shine on the water and shape of the bush.  I did the water first. I did a light drawing of the bush to begin with, but did not include it in my underpainting.  I really wanted to be able to focus on the water, which was rippling nicely and had such lovely lights and darks. Having done that, I put the bush in on top, using Giraults and soft pastels. I had only the color photo so nothing to really reference, except for the values of the greens. I found it difficult not to want to use the colors in front of me, and wished I’d also brought a B&W. I didn’t want to over do it. I do think that the warm fall colors are more interesting against the blues in the water than the dull greens of the photo.  The spot of light on water is a Roche whitish yellow green.  In the underpainting of the water, I used a variety of values of blue, with a light aqua in the lightest spot. I’m still not happy with the background, which i have tried to soften a number of times!  The dark shaoe of trees is too prominent and needs to be less defined, I think.

Both pictures are from the C&O Canal at Great Falls, Maryland. John and I went last Friday on a perfect fall afternoon and I shot 100 pictures.  Tomorrow we leave for a weekend in Iowa, where on Saturday we will be touring the bridges of Madison County!!!  Who knew that these were south of Des Moines!  Expect to see Meryl Streep.

Canal Reflections, 11 x 14, UART 400

Canal Light, 11 x 14, UART 400