Winter 2016 Pastel Class

PASTEL: Cozy Cottage Week 1

This week we started work on our pastel painting. I want to remind you that I am working on sanded paper I made myself and I have also put on a watercolor underpainting. You do not have to do this. I was just doing it as a demo to show you that you have options, if you do not wish to work on sanded paper or do not have sanded paper, you do not need to worry about it. Work on a surface that you feel comfortable with, you will just have to remember that if you are working on regular pastel paper you will probably have to spray occasionally to get the tooth back so you can continue working, because I'm working on sandpaper I won't need to spray my painting to continue working - one of the advantages of working on sanded paper.

Having the watercolor underpainting is just a suggestion at this point I do not need to follow it exactly I can change anything in the painting as I go with my pastels because it is just painted on a board not carved in stone, so if you have put in an under painting don't feel that you must follow it exactly, it is more guideline then rule of law.

I like to start from the top and work down which usually translates into starting with the sky and working into the foreground, this accomplishes a couple of things: First I'm not dragging my hand through my pastels going back and forth from top to bottom and two, by putting in the background first I make sure that anything that is behind is going into be there when I put in what’s in front and I won't have to try and match colors or strokes to make it look like what is supposed to be behind the object in front. I hope that made sense. Starting in the background with the sky I wanted to create soft evening sky with windblown clouds and a hint of color at the horizon.

The grey in the clouds I got from mixing several colors together. First I started with a light medium gray, to that I've added some light blue, some lavender and some white then blend them together with my fingers in an upward, curved motion. I want the clouds to look windswept which means that I need to blend them in the direction that I want them to go. Direction of your stroke is as important in pastel as it is in oil, acrylic or watercolor because it tells your viewer that something is in motion or it has a direction for it is laying flat so don't just go back and forth or up and down, look at what you are going to be painting and follow the direction of the thing that you are trying to create, in this case it is windswept clouds.

There is a bit of open sky right at the bottom of the clouds to the horizon that needs to be a light, raspberry sherbet color. I think I may have gotten mine to pink and I will correct it in class next time, you will want yours to be a lighter color than what I have so use a cool pink a bit on the purple aside and white to create a soft lavender pink color for this part of the sky. Blended with your fingers or the paper stump and also blended up into the grey clouds above this will give them a bit of a change of color like you would see in an evening sky.

At the very bottom of the sky area along the horizon are some distant trees or hillsides that are not distinct enough to make out exactly what they are it is just a soft grey mauve color that is just slightly darker than the sky above it, don't get too dark otherwise it brings these trees forward and we want to keep them in the distance. If you do not have a gray purple then use a light lavender and add grey to it to create the soft distant trees blend them and slightly smudge them into the sky so there is no hard line.

Find either a blue or a purple that is just a little bit darker then the distant trees that you just put in, it would be nice if it had an edge or if you have pastel pencils in the right value, because you will be drawing the next layer of your distant trees. These are trees that are closer to the house so you can see branches and trunks but you don't see detail these are just basically a bunch of lines so don't try to overthink it just put in a bunch of crooked lines in the background and then tap them with your finger and soften them slightly.

Next I wanted to put in the base color for the distance snow between the trees we just put in and the house. I have a light lavender color that I used behind the house and it goes back into those trees we just put in. I smudged this color in so that I have nice soft even texture to it and lightly blended it into those trees in the distance I will work on this more later I also went over parts of that holly bush with this color it won't hurt the holly bush in the long run I also under painted the snow on top of the house. If you do not have a lit enough lavender or blue, start with white and add in your lightest lavender or blue, just enough to tint the white.

Next I started to paint the house. I believe that this little house was made of fieldstones but if you have your own house or some other thing that you want to put in this area, be sure that you have your own reference material to look at so that you know what colors you will need to fill in your building. I started with a warm golden oak color and I did all the walls with the golden ochre color and then on the shadowed sides of the walls I added a medium purple then blended the colors in the shadow area. The roof is a thatched roof which means that it is made with grasses and not wood or shale shingles or some other building materials, this was quite common to thatch the roof of a house. I found color that was a little bit darker then the color I used for the walls and I filled in the areas that were not covered with snow the key here is my strokes follow the shape of the roof so they are at an angle depending on the roof, again the direction of your strokes are important to your painting.

I blended these where I could with my finger but when the area got too small I switched to my color shaper. A color shaper is a tool that has a soft rubber tip on the end that lets you get into small places you can also use a paper stump to blend these colors just watch your directions.

Then I took my indigo color (a dark blue grey) and I started to add some of the shadows under the eaves and also to create the doors and windows, I will do more detail later as I am finishing up the painting. I also added the chimney using a sienna color and purple on the shadowed side.

If you don’t have a dark blue or purple use the darkest of your cool colors that you have rather than using black. Black can be too harsh even some of the darker greys are too much and look unnatural. If you have to use a grey, add some of your dark blue to it to soften the color.

The pine trees behind the house were made using a dark grey green. I want a dark color behind the house so that the white roof will look lighter in contrast to the dark trees behind it. Find darkest green you have for the trees, you may need to add a touch of blue to the color if it is too green. You don't want it too green it should be on the bluish side so test it first before you put it into your painting.

This is where we stopped for the day if you are working on the project please try to have your painting to this point I will continue to work on this the next time we meet so keep painting and I will see you in class.