Just finished this painting today and will be taking it to my framer tomorrow for the gallery in McLean. It was done from an old 4 x 6 color photo that I painted from some years ago. Unfortunately, I never was able to get good pictures of all that snow we had last year–so I was relegated to looking into old references. The photo was narrower and didn’t have as many shadows at the bottom. I wanted to increase the shadows to lead the eye into the picture. Used grayed blues, a few violets, browns, and peaches for the light. Also used a light gray from my new turquoise Blue Earth set, which turned out to be quite nice. I prefer to paint more seasonally, but gallery requests are hard to turn down! The painting was begun with a charcoal wash and hard pastel underpainting.
Winter Light, 20 x 24, UART 400
Jean,
I know what a watercolor or pastel under painting is, but what is a charcoal wash? I’m very appreciative of your site and love the distant hills in the above painting and the simplicity of the trees and shadows. Thanks for sharing.
Laura–thanks so much for commenting. I like to begin painting that don’t have a lot of picky lines (such as buildings) with charcoal (soft vine). I don’t fill it all in–I just work out the places that are important. In this painting, I just used two lines for the distant hills, but I filled in the trees with charcoal. I then take water and a brush (old bristle brush) and work over the charcoal to get a sense of the composition and to work the charcoal into the paper. It was really great doing this with the small bushes at bottom as the brush was a great way to approximate their shapes and lines. If I don’t like the composition at that point, I can remove or add charcoal and continue working until I do. I think there are some recent posts that might include the charcoal. When I go to my studio, I often forget my camera–the only way I can take decent pictures of works in progress. I hope this answers your question.
Appreciate your comment Jean, would love to see it in action–don’t forget your camera! Sounds sort of like a notan wash?
Absolutely beautiful! I turquoise in shadow is beautiful. I never would have thought of that. Brilliant.