Winter 2019 Pastel Class

Desert Demo Week 2

Last week, as part of showing several techniques from an alcohol wash under painting to adding an acrylic ground to the surface of the watercolor paper to keeping a more impressionistic look by leaving the chalk un-blended  for the most part, I ran out of time to finish the painting. I finished it in our last class.

There are a few things I want to point out on this final image. First notice that because I did do a bit more "detail" in the flowers in the foreground it allows the viewer to come to the conclusion that shapes of similar color in the background are probably the same as the flowers where you can see more detail. This is why you don't need to do a lot of painstaking detail in the background because if you have something of similar color or shape in the foreground your mind can fill in the blanks.

The other thing I noticed was I did something I should have caught as I was painting this but didn't until I was looking at the photo, my flowers across the bottom are too regular. They are evenly spaced apart, all looking the same basic direction and almost in a straight line across. This is important for you to see in many ways: First, so you are aware of the problem so you can avoid it in your own paintings and second, we all can make mistakes no matter how long we have been doing something. To line things up and keep them about the same size is a perfectly normal human thing to do and we as artists need to be aware of that tendency so we can try to avoid it. I was trying to finish up the demo and was not paying attention so that part of my brain got away with lining up the flowers in a perfect little row that I didn't notice until now.

Yes, I could - if I had the painting - go back in and change what I have but it was just a demo so I'm not really wanting to spend any more energy on it, plus you get to see I do make mistakes :-)

I also made a horizontal rather than a vertical out of the vertical reference photo (upper right corner) probably because in my mind I was thinking "landscape" when I started this. Again, not really a problem but it does show you that you can convert one to the other, you just have to watch the problems like I had with the foreground flowers.

I'm not sure what I will be doing in our next class, I may start with a charcoal under painting with an alcohol wash unless someone has a specific problem they would like demoed. 

Keep painting.