Pastel Project: Alaskan Fishing Village Week 2
The first week or our project we did an alcohol and charcoal under painting. This established our dark areas and some of the middle grays. Last class we started adding color.
Just a note here: Some of the dark charcoal may show through and that will be a good thing. That dark becomes the deep dark shadows of the forest and other dark shadowed areas so it isn't necessary to cover it all. Let it work for you.
The first thing I did was to add in my sky colors. While I didn't want the gray, gloomy day the photo was taken, I also didn't want a bright blue sky. this is my personal preference, if you want your sky brighter, that is up to you but there are things to remember when painting skies - Skies are darker as the go up from the horizon so use your darker colors at the top and lighter colors as you go down. I used a mid value gray/blue and a very light blue and blended them to get what I hope is a clearing sky color.
You will have to paint around the tree branches but this is also a time where you can reshape your trees if you got them too solid or if you need sky holes. Remember to look at the photo to see how lacy the tops of the trees are and how they vary in size and shape.
The branches of the trees have about 4 different colors of green from very dark to a mid value color. Remember, these are the ends of the branches of the trees that are in the light, leave some of the dark and be very sketchy with your strokes so it looks like branches coming out from around the tree not just the sides.
There is a deciduous tree behind the red building that is a bit brighter, lighter green. Be aware that the branches come out from the trees a bit different and it has a very different shape.
I got started on the brown building using a cream color, an indigo (dark gray/blue), a light sienna and a darker sienna and the gray/blue from the sky. the key thing here is to be aware of the direction things are going. the roof slants down, follow the slant. The boards on the side of the building and the top of the front are horizontal, but the lower half of the front is vertical. I lightly blended parts of these colors but tried not to blend too much. For the lines of the boards, I used the indigo because it is a harder pastel, you can use a dark pastel pencil or other cool dark pastel .
This is where we left off but I do want to note that when I got home and was looking at the photos, I realized that the back part of my roof is too high, I will fix it in class so you can see how I fix something I don't like.
Keep painting and I will see you in class.
Project: Alaska Fishing Village Week 1
The first thing I showed was how to get the design on my paper using what I call "poor man's transfer paper" by applying chalk to the back of my design, then going over the lines with a pencil or the end of a brush to transfer the design to my paper.
Usually I use a color like a light blue or purple so I won't have problems when I'm working my painting but because I am going to be doing an alcohol wash over charcoal, I just used the charcoal for this step.
Once I got the design on my paper - I am using sanded Bristol paper mounted on foamcore that I made myself - I wanted to do a rather loose value under painting using black (charcoal) to get my trees in and to establish some of the values (light to dark) of my painting.
When I was doing the trees I was trying to keep the spaces at the top edge of the trees and suggesting tall and short trees. These are not Christmas trees, they are not perfect, they are not all the same height. These are things you need to keep in mind as you work.
The closer to the buildings I got the more I tried to cover the paper so I could get a dark background. On the right, there is a lighter tree so I did leave it blank.
In the water, I pulled the charcoal straight down going around the reflections of the buildings.
In the buildings where I wanted a little bit of a value change, I lightly skimmed the paper with the charcoal so there was only a little color to move around in the next step.
The next step is using rubbing alcohol to set the design onto my paper. This is just plain rubbing like you get at the drug store, nothing special, I used my watercolor brush to apply it to my paper.
I went over everything that I had charcoal on to set in so it won't come off as easily when I go to paint, this also establishes your dark values of which there are many in this project. Where I needed just a little color I used what was on the brush to do parts of the houses and roofs.
This is where we finished in class, try to get you paintings to this point before next class.
keep painting and I will see you in class.
