Pastel Fall 2015 Class: Learning by Observing

I had finished my project the previous class so I brought in something I wanted to do for myself. I found a painting I did in my plein air class and the reference photo I took down in San Pedro by the boats and working on a charcoal gray sanded paper I used both references to work on my painting.

Reference photo

Plein air oil 

I liked the looseness of the plein air painting but I needed the photo to see detail where the painting was unclear. I also used the painting for my color reference because a photo can be very monotone. Cameras do have their limitations so an artist needs to take special care to note colors and atmosphere when all you are taking are photos. If you can sit down and do a color sketch or a plein air painting that is better when you get back into the studio to paint.

Watching someone else work is as important as painting itself. You see how someone works at the speed they like to work at which is usually a lot faster than working on a class project. You see how they handle different aspect of a painting, the colors they choose, how they attack a complicated element such as the cluttered dock behind the boats or the distant palm trees in my painting. You see the flow of the artist and how it might help you in your painting so never pass up the opportunity to just watch someone paint.

I also want to stress you need to practice doing just studies of single elements. I know we all want to have a finished masterpiece, but if you want to be a better painter you need to learn to focus on the elements of a painting. There are artists that research a future painting by gathering photos and doing sketches and thumbnails long before they ever start on their masterpiece. With all that preparation it usually does turn out to be a masterpiece. Give this a try for a few months – yes, a few months because it won’t happen overnight – doing some sketches and thumbnails, taking or finding images so you know your subject. The drawing I’ve done of wood took me 10 minutes tops but it tells me so much so when I get to wood in a painting I’m doing, I understand what I need to do. Try it you might like it, especially the results and it won’t hurt.

You will continue to work on your own projects, so keep painting and I will see you in class.

PASTEL CLASS FALL 2015 Project: Cool Refuge Week 4

The last class was spent on finishing up the project and straightening up things I didn’t like and putting in details so I could call it good.

One are the first things I did, was I needed to correct the flowers that I had put in the vines that overhang the chair. When I was doing the blog the last time I noticed that I had lined the flowers pup, made them all the same size, all the same shape and equal distance apart and it really didn't look good, so I took a stiff bristle brush to just removed flowers, I also reshape my vines a little bit and worked my way across. I was working on sanded paper so this is an easy method to remove unwanted chalk, it will also work on regular pastel paper and you might also need to use an eraser.

When I was done reshaping the vines and removing some flowers I needed to go back in and do a little repair on my wall, so I took the dark ochre color for my wall, added a little bit of the medium lavender color and blended them together. It doesn't need to be perfect because it's an old beat up wall, I just needed it to look similar.

I put the flowers back in being mindful of shape size direction and to be sure not to line them up. Using a cool light color - it was a lavender blue color that I used - for the flowers.

Now on to the detail work: I wanted to put in some places where it looked like the stucco had broken off the wall. I used a warm sienna color on the sunlit wall and a darker, cooler sienna color for the shadowed wall, I also found a light tan color to use as the mortar between the bricks, then I just suggested parts of bricks showing in the holes in the wall.

To create a three-dimensional look to the cracks in the bricks I took a dark indigo blue and I lightly lined around the edge of the stucco. The thinner the line is that you put in the closer the stucco will look to the bricks, the wider the line is you put in the further away the stucco looks from the wall, use this optical illusion to your best advantage. I also use that dark color to come off of the patches to make it look like cracks in the stucco. Try not to get too carried away with this because it can feel like a good thing and then become too much, it is an easy trap to fall into.

I wanted to suggest old rusted nails in parts of the chair and how I accomplish that was I took the burnt sienna color and a little bit of orange and put it where I wanted the nail heads, put it down in a little streak, then took my finger and made it smudged it down, this softens the edges and blends the colors together, then I took my dark indigo blue and suggested some nail heads in where I put the rust streaks.

The flagstones seem to be the bane of almost everyone in class and they really aren't that hard. Remember they are not the focus of the painting you really only need to suggest them, what I did was I took a dark brown and my dark indigo color and what I was painting was the front edges of some of the flagstones, mostly those around the chair, that's really all you're going to see. When you're looking at stones from an angle, you only see the front edge and as you go further back into the background you will see less and less as they visually blend into each other, you might see just a little bit of the top edge of a few but just let it fade into the background.

Also be mindful of their shape: They will be longer across than they are wide because you are looking at them at an angle. This is called “foreshortening” and you can see this if you take a round lid, look at it straight on then tip the back away from you, it will appear to become an oval. This is an optical illusion but you need to understand the principals of this to create believable flat surfaces.

After I've got some of the front of the flagstones in the shaded area, I took a light blue violet and just suggested the tops of some of the flagstones, this is the reflected highlight in the shadow areas and it gives just enough detail to suggests the stones, that is all you need.

I tend to work back and forth between light and dark, adding color and finishing up the detail at this point working around and through my painting because I want to keep it all at an even rate of finish, if I see something that needs some more work, I work on that and then go back to something else I don't want to get stuck detailing something out and then forgetting the rest of it.

  

Please look at your reference photo and anything else that will help you finish this painting. If you need to work on the wood, I have included some photos I took of an old picnic bench I have in the backyard, I know that I have suggested that you make your own reference files - be they cut out from magazines and newspapers or on your photos or from the computer - they are a critical resource when you are trying to paint in any media, they give your ideas, they help you with detail, so don't just count on me or someone else to create these files for you need to start one or many for yourself.

 

I do want you to notice that the grains of the wood change direction when there is an end to the wood. You can see it quite vividly in the photograph I posted this should help you to see how to finish the wood on your chair.

I am basically finished with my painting so next week I will be doing demos where they are needed and if you are done with your painting then you will need to find something to work on in class I will help you where I can and give demos as needed so keep painting and I will see you in class.

Pastel Fall 2015 Project: Cool Refuge Week 3

I worked a bit more in the background on the sunny wall of this project. One of the things I noticed that I didn't like too much was it my door was to red, so to tone it down I found a green and added just a little bit of the green and blended it together with the red. This is a good thing to know whenever a color is too much and you need to tone it down, you find its complement or form of its complement and add it to the color. This works in all media so this is one of those bits of information that you can put under “general art knowledge” if you decide to take up other ways to paint.

I also added some vines up the side of the window. I worked a little bit on the shadows and I added some warmer brighter colors to the planter box and the window frame.

You will need to have your reference photo in front of you when you are doing the detail on this chair because you will need to see where the values change and also where the colors change so that photograph is very important.

One thing I did before I got too far along on my chair was I went back to the mold behind it and I darkened it. I took my dark blue green and added some indigo and a dark brown because I want that area between the slats to be darker then the slats. If you look at the reference photo you will see that this is the case with the actual chair.

If you have pastel pencils they may work better for you for this next step then your sticks because they will have more edges and you'll have a bit more control, but if all you have are your sticks you may have to chip them or break them to get a sharper edge. Look at them and see if you have something that has a little bit sharper edge on that stick of chalk.

Looking at the reference photo you will see that in the back part of the chair there is a wide variety value and color so to what is already there from last week - which is dark blue gray - I found darker browns, darker blues, darker greys and added them to create value and texture. There's even some dark green in there, I also found a light brown or orange color that will represent what's left of the paint on the chair, save this one out so that you can find it again.

I referred to my reference photo quite often, I was looking for value – dark, light - I was also looking for color changes so that I could add those colors to my chair. The front of the chair there are blues and light violet colors as well as soft browns put those on and then lightly blended them together. You didn't want them to become a homogeneous color you just want them to be more of a mottled background for the detail. I went over it again with sharper edges and leaving the color as is to create that feeling of old wood texture.

When wood gets old where it has edges that are along the grain, there will be deep splits. Keep this in mind as you are putting in your detail. There will be more places where you can add the darker grooves around the edges of the wood, like at the end armrest, and at the end of the front part of the chair. I will do a demo on wood next week to go over specifics if you have trouble seeing this in the reference  photo, though I do suggest you look at old wood and study it to see all it intricacies.

I also based in the vines that run across the top of the painting, you do not have to do this if you don't want to, but I like the fact that it stops the viewers eye from wandering up the wall and out of the page so it's an eye stopper, even a little bit of it will help your painting.

I started the underpainting for the vines with the darkest green I had and added to it some of my dark indigo blue. Remember this is in shadows so it is going to be a very cool color. Then I slightly blended the two colors together and I found to lighter turquoise blue to suggest the leaves. I just scribbled them on, I did not try to draw individual leaves, I also tried to make the vines have an irregular shape as they came down the wall.

Using my light violet color I added in shapes to suggest flowers on the vines remember it's in shadow so you won't have any bright white colors and white will look blue or lavender in the shadows. To suggest some highlights on the flowers I found a lighter blue and just suggested some lighter edges to the flowers, there is no distinct light coming into this part of the painting so it isn't important other than to suggest some detail on the flowers.

This is where I ended for the day, there is still some work to be done on the paving stones and some of the vines and also the missing chunks of wall but we should be able to finish this up next week so keep painting and I will see you in class.

PASTEL CLASS FALL 2015 Project: Cool Refuge

In our last class we got most everything under painted except for the chair and the plants underneath the chair so if I started with the plants under the chair getting them under painted.

Have your reference photo in front of you so you can see what I'm talking about. If you look at the plants as they go under the chair they become cooler in color because they are not only in a shady area but there is also in a cast shadow from the chair creating a darker color shadow on the plant. To achieve this color I found a dark, cool green and basically scribbled the color in under the chair filling in where the plant will go. You want that erratic scribbled look to your chalk strokes so that it looks like a jumble of leaves under the chair, it's not a wall it’s a plant, you don't paint it in flat or vertical you want to create texture and you do that by scribbling in the color. As the plant comes out from under chair switch to a warmer but still darker green and create the underpainting for your plant. This plant is growing out of cracks in the walkway so suggest that your plant is also doing this with an irregular shape at the bottom. I will start adding a bit of detail later but leave this for now.

I also added plants into the pot in the back and the flower box using light green some medium green nothing really dark at least not yet and just suggested some plants. I didn't erase any of the color that I had already put for the window I just blended in the color that was there with the new color of greens.

For the curtains I took a darker blue and I just drew in the gap between the curtains leaving what was there as the curtain color adding a little bit of detail to the curtains with a lighter blue, nothing fancy. For the shadows from the planter box and the pot I just used a soft purple color it was almost grey.

Starting the highlight of the stones of the walkway, I started back by the door. They are a light yellow but not quite as light as the wall. I made little marks that were close together and jumbled up to suggest highlights on the tops of the stones in front of the door and down the front of the building. There is a shadow that is being cast by the shadowed wall down that walkway so as I got into that shadowed area I switched from yellow to a light orange, from the light orange, to red orange and from the red orange into burnt sienna and blues and from the burnt sienna and blues into blues and grays and most of my darker cooler colors this is still part of the underpainting but it is now starting to suggest the texture of a cobblestone walkway I will do more later as I am finishing up my painting. I did fill in underneath my chair after I had the chair based in I used the dark colors to help create the edges of the plant and also my chair.

Looking at the referencephoto I wanted to see on the chair where the dark and the lights were also I was looking to see if and where there were color changes in the wood. If you look at the photo you will see that the back of the chair is a darker, color gray color while the front of the chair and the two legs are lighter and warmer, they have more brown than them, this is how you need to paint your chair so that it doesn't look flat when you finish. Starting in the back part of the chair I took a medium dark grey and colored in the slats on the back of the chair, I also took a light lavender blue and lightly went over all of the slats as well and gently blended them together with my fingers. The seat of the chair and the front of the chair I used a soft, warm grey and a light grey blended those lightly together. The legs that come down from the arms were a very warm, almost, grey color my chalk said it was burnt sienna but it was a very light burnt sienna. I also used a little bit darker version of that color in shadowed areas along with that lavender blue color lightly blending them together.

The arms of the chair have some very dark wood. The top of the closer arm is very dark so I used a darker brown for that, I also used the darker brown for the shadow under the opposite arm and the shadow on the leg right below it near the ground and also for the leg at the back of the chair where it touches the ground on the close side.

Once I had the chair based in I wanted to work a little bit on those plants if you have a deep turquoise green color that is perfect for the shadow color of the plants underneath it needs to be just a little bit lighter than what you already have there. Again you are just going to make a bunch of random marks vaguely in the shape of leaves. Look at the photograph, mostly what you see is just a mass of color you if you look close you will see detail but really all you see is a jumble of green, that is what you need to try and recreate under your chair rather than painting each individual leaf it will look way too busy.

When you get finished putting in the shadowed leaves under the chair switch to a lighter medium green for the leaves that are outside of the chair, none of these leaves will get very bright because all of it is in the shadow so don't pick up a light green chalk, you want a medium light color and if it is slightly on the blue side the better. Do the same thing with this lighter color to create a jumble of shapes to create the impression of leaves. I also took my dark indigo blue color and added some shadows back into and underneath some of the plant to create more texture. I will be finishing this later.

This is where I left off so try to get your painting as close to this as you can and we will continue with our chair next time keep painting and I will see you in class.