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.