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.