Summer 2018 Pastel Class

Pastel Project: Marsh Madness Week 3

This week I finished up my project by adding detail, checking my values... just all the little things so I can give a preliminary thumbs-up and call it done. I usually live with a finished project for a while before making the final "Yeah, its done." after I have lived with it for a couple of weeks, but for class purposes, I consider this done. You will also have to decide if you are finished and just how much detail you want to put in. Have your reference photo in front of you so you can decide what is important to you and what you want to leave out: A little or a lot, that is up to you and it depends on your own tastes. 

To these tree trunks I added texture using my indigo as well as a lavender blue. Light tends to bounce around in the atmosphere especially around water or any other reflective surface, so on the parts of the trunks that were over the water is where I added the lavender. 

I also covered parts of the trunks with clumps of leaves and some dead twigs and pulled up some grasses around the base using a medium light blue/green.

I brought in the branch from the top with a dark brown and indigo and I added more defined leaves though they are just marks.

The fine lines are a challenge but if you have a harder pastel it may work better for you. I was using the dark brown for larger twigs but switched to my indigo for smaller ones because it is a harder pastel. A light touch when drawing the twigs also helps.

In the bushes on the right I added the smaller twigs in a similar fashion to the bigger trees and I also added some twigs at the top that are gold and a bit of orange. This is there in the photo and I like the complimentary colors to help break up all the green. I did use touches of the orange in other places around the painting so it wasn't a "unique" color.

In the right corner I added more reflections from the bushes and reeds growing out of the water. Use different colors of green from light to the dark and pull some up over the bottoms of the bushes, this will set them down in the water.

I also added dead branches, some orange leaves and reflections of the branches in the corner.

The dark reflections on the left have weeds, reeds and branches poking out. The grasses and duck weed (the stuff that floats on the top of ponds) I did with the medium blue/green I mentioned before. Against the dark of the reflections it looks very light but I was using that same color in the sun lit areas of the water and it almost disappears.
There are reflections of branches we don't see because they are above the water but not something we painted. Remember to ripple the marks you make to suggest reflections so it looks like water movement.

Bottom line is you will finish this painting the way you need to finish yours, it doesn't need to look like mine. I like color so my paintings tend to be a bit on the vivid side, others like a more subtle color so you will need to learn how to gray your colors, it is all a part of the process of learning so keep painting and I will see you in class.