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.