Fall 2016 Pastel Class

Pastel Class Project: Pumpkins on Parade Week 2

I have gotten all my pumpkins based in and now I am starting to flesh them out. I need to avoid trying to finish one, like the blue pumpkin, because it is fun and interesting, while leaving the rest because my finished painting could look overworked in some places and under worked in others. Try to bring all parts of your painting up together.

The dust from the chalk is creating that light area in the foreground, I will deal with that later.

I added some turquoise greens to the blue part of the pumpkin and I also added more of the texture. Please notice that the texture is more like scribbles though they do follow the curve of the pumpkin.

The stem was based in using a light gray and a medium gray.

 With the base color for the other pumpkins in I then went into deepening the shadows and defining the shapes better. The details will come later, worry more about shapes and angles at this point.

The same holds true for the other small pumpkins at this point: get the base color and the shadows going first, then add the detail.

Note that the foreground pumpkin is a soft light yellow and the one in the back is soft greys and blues.

Each segment of the pumpkin has it's own curves and texture be sure to look before you start adding color so you know what your are painting.

I was using an indigo color for my darker shadows on my pumpkins.







I will continue on this painting, I hope that if you are following along you are having as much fun as I am. Keep painting and I will see you in class.

Fall 2016 Pastel Class Week 5

Pumpkins on Parade - Week 1

Pastels work up surprisingly fast for me, yes, this is only the first week I have managed to get all of my pumpkins under painted and started on some of the detail. I am working on a black sanded piece of mat board.

The orange pumpkins are mostly done at this point with a warm mid tone burnt sienna in the lighter areas working to a darker sienna and finally to dark brown and indigo with even a touch of a dark purple in the shadows. Once I had my colors down I blended from the light to the dark to smooth and blend my colors.

The lighter pumpkins were handled much the same way, finding lighter and shadow colors that matched the base color of the pumpkins (worry about the detail later) then blending once I had the colors down. Always be aware of the curves of the  surface of these pumpkins and follow them with your chalk and when blending.

The blue one was a bit different in that my under painting for the blue was shades of blue all the way across the pumpkin as if the bumps didn't exist. I used various shades of blue and to dull the blue I added very lightly soft siennas and blended to get closer to the color. 

Once I had that base color for the blue pumpkin in, I used several shades of brown from a light tan for the lighter areas to a dark brown and also my indigo blue in the shadow areas. I scribbled this on the pumpkin but I followed the curves with my chalk so it looks like it is a part of the  pumpkin. The lightest color is a soft orange color.

Keep painting and I will see you in class.

Fall 2016 Pastel Class Week 2

FALL 2016 PASTEL CLASS PROJECT: Windblown Week 2

This project worked up rather quickly and this is the final session for this particular project I am thinking we will have another project this semester and will start it in about 2 weeks.

This week what I did was to work on the foreground tree because it is closer it gets a bit more detail than the tree in the back. I used various shades of gray to charcoal to create the shading on my tree and I used a soft cream color for the highlights in my tree.

The trickiest part of doing this tree are the fine branches because you really need to learn how to find an edge on your pastels and to lighten the pressure enough to get the fine lines. You need to get quite a few of these finer limbs and twigs and branches to make the tree look more realistic you want to break up the negative space and that is the space you see between the branches. If those spaces you see are large and open it doesn't look complete so you need to add enough branches to break up those negative spaces to create this windblown tree.

For the grasses I used grey and my light lavender and a little bit darker lavender, I also wanted to be sure that I made the grasses lean over as well because this is supposed to be a windy situation and you create that sense of wind and direction of wind by the way the trees and the grasses are bent so don't have a tree leaning over and your grass is standing straight it will send conflicting information to your viewer.

Finish this up to your own liking and in the colors that you want to use and if you think you are going to be finished with this for next class you might want to bring something to work on, the following week I should have a new project ready to go so keep painting and I will see you in class.