Spring 2019 Pastel Class

Project: Pink Umbrella Week 2

Last week I did an under painting in watercolor then covered it with the ground for Pastel which, unfortunately, messed up my values. Before I started working on the pastel part of my painting in class I went in with my dark grey and black pastels to redo my values then set them with alcohol. I only needed to do the lower 2/3's the distant part could be light.

I used 3 different oranges. For the shadowed side of the hills the orange was closer to a light burnt sienna, a middle value orange and a light orange or Indian yellow-orange for the tops of the hills.

There were 2 greens and a gray blue for the green pars of the hill as well as a grayed lavender for the patches of purple flowers on the hillside. The rock and dirt areas were a very light tan, a bit darker redder tan and a medium dark brown with some medium dark grayed blue (indigo) for the shadows and cracks.

The important part isn't the colors as much as it in the direction you apply and blend the colors. Remember to follow the shape of the thing you are painting. If it is rounded your strokes need to be curved around the the object. If it is angled, you need to follow the angle ad you put on chalk or when you blend. The human eye picks up on the subtleties and your painting can look flat regardless of what you do and this applies to all mediums.

I put on the colors starting with the oranges first, then blended the colors with my fingers or with a color shaper for smaller areas then added the greens and lavenders, blended those color and lightly blended where they touched the orange. Finally I added the rocks and dirt. the redder tan was for general rock/dirt color the light tan was for highlights. The darker brown and indigo were for shadows and cracks and I only lightly blended the dirt and rocks with the color shaper  where I felt it necessary, mostly to get rid of a hard line, these things are in the distance so there won't be and hard lines.

That is as far as I got in class last time so I will pick up where I left off when we meet again. Keep painting.