Working through a pastel painting

 Working through a pastel painting

Planning Stage

First I find a pleasing composition and value study. Below I used warm TomBow markers to help identify the values. Notice the lines were loosely placed before I worked on the values.This is my idea I want to try.

Next, I place my paper in the vertical format on my easel. I use this sketch book design to place my shapes onto the paper. I used vine charcoal for this part.

I took the line drawing and placed a very small amount of black acrylic ink into a throw away plastic cup. You certainly don't need much. I then wet my brush with water I had available and put the design down on the paper. This is light gray pastel mat. I love the drips, to me they create a vibrating energy I want to show in my painting. 

Today I picked out some starting colors for this painting (on the first inked example if you look closely there is a color guide I made with these examples). This is my identification process to see not only how all the colors work together but, to identify values of my choices. I don't always do this, but I wanted to free myself up for application of lines and energy, so I thought this might help me. Always try to make your painting process easier for yourself. So if multiple sketches, color studies feel like they need to be done, then you should do it so you are very familiar with your subject. I often have an idea for what mood, composition and colors I want to use in a painting. With this in mind I know how my colors will react with each other, next to each other and so forth. This frees you from using your left brain and letting the right take over. I've always painted this way. The left side of our brain is the analytical side. It likes to figure things out, read, write and solve mathematical challenges. Hard to get past this stuff sometimes. So your goal is to engage the right side of the brain. This is your artistic side. This is the side famous painters, musicians and discoveries are used while creating. I listen to inspiring music often piano, acoustic guitar and old Gene Autry music. I also take this time to listen to audiobooks. I find the distraction allows the right brain to start creating and I find that I'm not thinking about the process and just being intuitive with my painting. It's a wonderful feeling, to set aside everything you think about normally and just let go. 

This is after the first pass. I really like how this piece is going. I've only lightly applied the pastel. I've used my dark selection in the foreground trees, identified the pathway and the shadows. I haven't laid in color for the sky yet but if you look in the high right corner you can see a bit where I tried some color for it. Not sure at this point if I want to use it. Seems to light right now. 

So here, I've identified some of the background plane. Notice my color choices are lighter and duller. This helps to push that background plane back further creating a 3D effect in the viewers mind. The composition is clearly a Z pattern of the pathway through the trees. I have color harmony and the foreground is cooler colors, and the background although duller are warmer versions of color. It is a good rule of thumb to decide if your foreground will be warm or cool and vice a versa before you start your painting. My warm background has the potential to pop forward too much so that is why the colors must be duller or grayed down if you will to keep that plane in the background. You can see I've started to explore some sky colors and have added a darker gray to it which I like. 

Here you see I've taken it a bit further. Notice the orche color in the middle ground is also in the foreground tree on the left. It also is by the purple tree shadow. It is a good idea to use color in a few spots to  help move the eye around the painting. Karen Margulis calls them spice marks. I feel at this point the tree on the left is too dark. I like the background, it seems to sit back where it should. 

I continue to carry out my idea and even sign my piece  😉. LOL then I decided that I didn't like the foreground tree shape. So now I started the picking at my painting, looking for corrections. It can be a pitfall for all of us. I decided the tree on the left was to dark, I didn't like the trunks on the background trees. So I started fixing things. 😞

So this is where I left it. I lighten the tree on the left to set it back. I changed up the foreground tree to a shape I liked better and darkened it on the overlapping edges to bring it forward more. I decreased and grayed down the values in the background too. I worked on the pathway colors. I was concerned that my color was to spotty between the planes so I calmed the blue down in the background too. I wanted the blue in the tree and its trunk to make the foreground tree sing and ultimately get you to look there. Notice the value of the blue is the same as the purple so it could be effectively used to move your eye around the painting just taking away the strength of it in the background but still moving your eye around the painting. It's now hanging where I can look at it for a few days before I put it away. 

My take away from this piece is; 

•  keep my planes clear to the viewer.
• working on pathway colors (it almost looks like snow) needs variety
• dulling the background trees even more or darkening the foreground tree to define the planes
• keep working on loosening up my mark making

Is it perfect? Heck no. Every piece I do I try to learn something I can work on with my next painting. I didn't let much of the ink show through and I wanted that so that is something to work on also. Do this breakdown of every piece. Do you see the Z composition? It's the path, in the lightest colors of the painting. I'll talk about this more in another post. You'll be able to find it under the composition label. 

Have fun painting!😀