Winter 2016 Pastel Class

PASTEL: Cozy Cottage Week 1

This week we started work on our pastel painting. I want to remind you that I am working on sanded paper I made myself and I have also put on a watercolor underpainting. You do not have to do this. I was just doing it as a demo to show you that you have options, if you do not wish to work on sanded paper or do not have sanded paper, you do not need to worry about it. Work on a surface that you feel comfortable with, you will just have to remember that if you are working on regular pastel paper you will probably have to spray occasionally to get the tooth back so you can continue working, because I'm working on sandpaper I won't need to spray my painting to continue working - one of the advantages of working on sanded paper.

Having the watercolor underpainting is just a suggestion at this point I do not need to follow it exactly I can change anything in the painting as I go with my pastels because it is just painted on a board not carved in stone, so if you have put in an under painting don't feel that you must follow it exactly, it is more guideline then rule of law.

I like to start from the top and work down which usually translates into starting with the sky and working into the foreground, this accomplishes a couple of things: First I'm not dragging my hand through my pastels going back and forth from top to bottom and two, by putting in the background first I make sure that anything that is behind is going into be there when I put in what’s in front and I won't have to try and match colors or strokes to make it look like what is supposed to be behind the object in front. I hope that made sense. Starting in the background with the sky I wanted to create soft evening sky with windblown clouds and a hint of color at the horizon.

The grey in the clouds I got from mixing several colors together. First I started with a light medium gray, to that I've added some light blue, some lavender and some white then blend them together with my fingers in an upward, curved motion. I want the clouds to look windswept which means that I need to blend them in the direction that I want them to go. Direction of your stroke is as important in pastel as it is in oil, acrylic or watercolor because it tells your viewer that something is in motion or it has a direction for it is laying flat so don't just go back and forth or up and down, look at what you are going to be painting and follow the direction of the thing that you are trying to create, in this case it is windswept clouds.

There is a bit of open sky right at the bottom of the clouds to the horizon that needs to be a light, raspberry sherbet color. I think I may have gotten mine to pink and I will correct it in class next time, you will want yours to be a lighter color than what I have so use a cool pink a bit on the purple aside and white to create a soft lavender pink color for this part of the sky. Blended with your fingers or the paper stump and also blended up into the grey clouds above this will give them a bit of a change of color like you would see in an evening sky.

At the very bottom of the sky area along the horizon are some distant trees or hillsides that are not distinct enough to make out exactly what they are it is just a soft grey mauve color that is just slightly darker than the sky above it, don't get too dark otherwise it brings these trees forward and we want to keep them in the distance. If you do not have a gray purple then use a light lavender and add grey to it to create the soft distant trees blend them and slightly smudge them into the sky so there is no hard line.

Find either a blue or a purple that is just a little bit darker then the distant trees that you just put in, it would be nice if it had an edge or if you have pastel pencils in the right value, because you will be drawing the next layer of your distant trees. These are trees that are closer to the house so you can see branches and trunks but you don't see detail these are just basically a bunch of lines so don't try to overthink it just put in a bunch of crooked lines in the background and then tap them with your finger and soften them slightly.

Next I wanted to put in the base color for the distance snow between the trees we just put in and the house. I have a light lavender color that I used behind the house and it goes back into those trees we just put in. I smudged this color in so that I have nice soft even texture to it and lightly blended it into those trees in the distance I will work on this more later I also went over parts of that holly bush with this color it won't hurt the holly bush in the long run I also under painted the snow on top of the house. If you do not have a lit enough lavender or blue, start with white and add in your lightest lavender or blue, just enough to tint the white.

Next I started to paint the house. I believe that this little house was made of fieldstones but if you have your own house or some other thing that you want to put in this area, be sure that you have your own reference material to look at so that you know what colors you will need to fill in your building. I started with a warm golden oak color and I did all the walls with the golden ochre color and then on the shadowed sides of the walls I added a medium purple then blended the colors in the shadow area. The roof is a thatched roof which means that it is made with grasses and not wood or shale shingles or some other building materials, this was quite common to thatch the roof of a house. I found color that was a little bit darker then the color I used for the walls and I filled in the areas that were not covered with snow the key here is my strokes follow the shape of the roof so they are at an angle depending on the roof, again the direction of your strokes are important to your painting.

I blended these where I could with my finger but when the area got too small I switched to my color shaper. A color shaper is a tool that has a soft rubber tip on the end that lets you get into small places you can also use a paper stump to blend these colors just watch your directions.

Then I took my indigo color (a dark blue grey) and I started to add some of the shadows under the eaves and also to create the doors and windows, I will do more detail later as I am finishing up the painting. I also added the chimney using a sienna color and purple on the shadowed side.

If you don’t have a dark blue or purple use the darkest of your cool colors that you have rather than using black. Black can be too harsh even some of the darker greys are too much and look unnatural. If you have to use a grey, add some of your dark blue to it to soften the color.

The pine trees behind the house were made using a dark grey green. I want a dark color behind the house so that the white roof will look lighter in contrast to the dark trees behind it. Find darkest green you have for the trees, you may need to add a touch of blue to the color if it is too green. You don't want it too green it should be on the bluish side so test it first before you put it into your painting.

This is where we stopped for the day if you are working on the project please try to have your painting to this point I will continue to work on this the next time we meet so keep painting and I will see you in class.

Winter Pastel Class 2016

Pastel Winter 2016 Project: Cold Country Charm Wk 1

I like to work on a sanded paper or sanded surface because I like the tooth (roughness of the paper and its ability to hold the pastel without spraying), but I don't like the cost or the limitations of the products available so I make my own sanded paper using Golden's Ground for Pastel. for about the price of a couple of sheets of commercial sanded paper I can buy a whole jar of GfP and make a lot more (I've never counted but it is more than 2).

I pour a little bit of the Ground into a small container such as something you would get salsa in from a fast food restaurant, maybe about a third of the container and add equal amounts of water. You don't have to do this but it seems to go on smoother and you can control the amount of tooth you get on your surface. Not enough, just add another coat.

I mixed the Ground and water together thoroughly so there were not lumps and applied it to the mat board I am going to use for this project. A side note here: you will probably want to also get either some acrylic gesso or varnish to seal the other side of a porous surface like paper or mat board because when the ground dries it will probably curl the paper. Adding gesso or acrylic varnish to the other side will counteract the curl and flatten  it out again, it also seals the paper so if you are doing watercolor, acrylic, alcohol or ink washes as an under painting the paper won't wrinkle or buckle from the moisture. Let this dry overnight if possible before working on it.

When the Ground was dry to the touch (I really should have let it dry longer but it was okay) I took my watercolors and mixed a soft cool (bluish) wash of ultramarine blue with a little touch of purple and/or burnt sienna with a lot of water to give me a bluish/gray wash. I went over my entire canvas with this color because it was very light and most of the snow is some form of blue, lavender or gray not white and where I did have white, I could take a damp brush or paper towel and wipe it off.

Mixing a bit darker wash - more paint less water - I sketched with my brush where I want things to be by putting in the outlines and shadows. Closer things and darker things I made yet a darker wash - even less water to paint - to sketch in where I want those things to be.

Please note that I have not chiseled this in stone, it is only a watercolor sketch and if I wanted I could wash the whole thing off and try again or when I get to the pastel part of this I can ignore what I have and do what I want this is just a sketch to help me get started on my painting. 

There is no one right way to start a pastel or any other kind of painting, this is just one way. You can do a more detailed tonal sketch or underpaint with darker versions of the finished color or no under painting or sketch with your chalk and go over it with water or rubbing alcohol... I am just showing you this way for this painting so you can try it if you want to, if you don't and want to stick with what you know, that's fine too, just don't always limit  yourself to one method because you might be missing out on something you might like the results of better.

We will start working on this project on Wednesday so I will see you in class.

Pastel Fall 2015 Class: Learning by Observing

I had finished my project the previous class so I brought in something I wanted to do for myself. I found a painting I did in my plein air class and the reference photo I took down in San Pedro by the boats and working on a charcoal gray sanded paper I used both references to work on my painting.

Reference photo

Plein air oil 

I liked the looseness of the plein air painting but I needed the photo to see detail where the painting was unclear. I also used the painting for my color reference because a photo can be very monotone. Cameras do have their limitations so an artist needs to take special care to note colors and atmosphere when all you are taking are photos. If you can sit down and do a color sketch or a plein air painting that is better when you get back into the studio to paint.

Watching someone else work is as important as painting itself. You see how someone works at the speed they like to work at which is usually a lot faster than working on a class project. You see how they handle different aspect of a painting, the colors they choose, how they attack a complicated element such as the cluttered dock behind the boats or the distant palm trees in my painting. You see the flow of the artist and how it might help you in your painting so never pass up the opportunity to just watch someone paint.

I also want to stress you need to practice doing just studies of single elements. I know we all want to have a finished masterpiece, but if you want to be a better painter you need to learn to focus on the elements of a painting. There are artists that research a future painting by gathering photos and doing sketches and thumbnails long before they ever start on their masterpiece. With all that preparation it usually does turn out to be a masterpiece. Give this a try for a few months – yes, a few months because it won’t happen overnight – doing some sketches and thumbnails, taking or finding images so you know your subject. The drawing I’ve done of wood took me 10 minutes tops but it tells me so much so when I get to wood in a painting I’m doing, I understand what I need to do. Try it you might like it, especially the results and it won’t hurt.

You will continue to work on your own projects, so keep painting and I will see you in class.

PASTEL CLASS FALL 2015 Project: Cool Refuge Week 4

The last class was spent on finishing up the project and straightening up things I didn’t like and putting in details so I could call it good.

One are the first things I did, was I needed to correct the flowers that I had put in the vines that overhang the chair. When I was doing the blog the last time I noticed that I had lined the flowers pup, made them all the same size, all the same shape and equal distance apart and it really didn't look good, so I took a stiff bristle brush to just removed flowers, I also reshape my vines a little bit and worked my way across. I was working on sanded paper so this is an easy method to remove unwanted chalk, it will also work on regular pastel paper and you might also need to use an eraser.

When I was done reshaping the vines and removing some flowers I needed to go back in and do a little repair on my wall, so I took the dark ochre color for my wall, added a little bit of the medium lavender color and blended them together. It doesn't need to be perfect because it's an old beat up wall, I just needed it to look similar.

I put the flowers back in being mindful of shape size direction and to be sure not to line them up. Using a cool light color - it was a lavender blue color that I used - for the flowers.

Now on to the detail work: I wanted to put in some places where it looked like the stucco had broken off the wall. I used a warm sienna color on the sunlit wall and a darker, cooler sienna color for the shadowed wall, I also found a light tan color to use as the mortar between the bricks, then I just suggested parts of bricks showing in the holes in the wall.

To create a three-dimensional look to the cracks in the bricks I took a dark indigo blue and I lightly lined around the edge of the stucco. The thinner the line is that you put in the closer the stucco will look to the bricks, the wider the line is you put in the further away the stucco looks from the wall, use this optical illusion to your best advantage. I also use that dark color to come off of the patches to make it look like cracks in the stucco. Try not to get too carried away with this because it can feel like a good thing and then become too much, it is an easy trap to fall into.

I wanted to suggest old rusted nails in parts of the chair and how I accomplish that was I took the burnt sienna color and a little bit of orange and put it where I wanted the nail heads, put it down in a little streak, then took my finger and made it smudged it down, this softens the edges and blends the colors together, then I took my dark indigo blue and suggested some nail heads in where I put the rust streaks.

The flagstones seem to be the bane of almost everyone in class and they really aren't that hard. Remember they are not the focus of the painting you really only need to suggest them, what I did was I took a dark brown and my dark indigo color and what I was painting was the front edges of some of the flagstones, mostly those around the chair, that's really all you're going to see. When you're looking at stones from an angle, you only see the front edge and as you go further back into the background you will see less and less as they visually blend into each other, you might see just a little bit of the top edge of a few but just let it fade into the background.

Also be mindful of their shape: They will be longer across than they are wide because you are looking at them at an angle. This is called “foreshortening” and you can see this if you take a round lid, look at it straight on then tip the back away from you, it will appear to become an oval. This is an optical illusion but you need to understand the principals of this to create believable flat surfaces.

After I've got some of the front of the flagstones in the shaded area, I took a light blue violet and just suggested the tops of some of the flagstones, this is the reflected highlight in the shadow areas and it gives just enough detail to suggests the stones, that is all you need.

I tend to work back and forth between light and dark, adding color and finishing up the detail at this point working around and through my painting because I want to keep it all at an even rate of finish, if I see something that needs some more work, I work on that and then go back to something else I don't want to get stuck detailing something out and then forgetting the rest of it.

  

Please look at your reference photo and anything else that will help you finish this painting. If you need to work on the wood, I have included some photos I took of an old picnic bench I have in the backyard, I know that I have suggested that you make your own reference files - be they cut out from magazines and newspapers or on your photos or from the computer - they are a critical resource when you are trying to paint in any media, they give your ideas, they help you with detail, so don't just count on me or someone else to create these files for you need to start one or many for yourself.

 

I do want you to notice that the grains of the wood change direction when there is an end to the wood. You can see it quite vividly in the photograph I posted this should help you to see how to finish the wood on your chair.

I am basically finished with my painting so next week I will be doing demos where they are needed and if you are done with your painting then you will need to find something to work on in class I will help you where I can and give demos as needed so keep painting and I will see you in class.

Pastel Fall 2015 Project: Cool Refuge Week 3

I worked a bit more in the background on the sunny wall of this project. One of the things I noticed that I didn't like too much was it my door was to red, so to tone it down I found a green and added just a little bit of the green and blended it together with the red. This is a good thing to know whenever a color is too much and you need to tone it down, you find its complement or form of its complement and add it to the color. This works in all media so this is one of those bits of information that you can put under “general art knowledge” if you decide to take up other ways to paint.

I also added some vines up the side of the window. I worked a little bit on the shadows and I added some warmer brighter colors to the planter box and the window frame.

You will need to have your reference photo in front of you when you are doing the detail on this chair because you will need to see where the values change and also where the colors change so that photograph is very important.

One thing I did before I got too far along on my chair was I went back to the mold behind it and I darkened it. I took my dark blue green and added some indigo and a dark brown because I want that area between the slats to be darker then the slats. If you look at the reference photo you will see that this is the case with the actual chair.

If you have pastel pencils they may work better for you for this next step then your sticks because they will have more edges and you'll have a bit more control, but if all you have are your sticks you may have to chip them or break them to get a sharper edge. Look at them and see if you have something that has a little bit sharper edge on that stick of chalk.

Looking at the reference photo you will see that in the back part of the chair there is a wide variety value and color so to what is already there from last week - which is dark blue gray - I found darker browns, darker blues, darker greys and added them to create value and texture. There's even some dark green in there, I also found a light brown or orange color that will represent what's left of the paint on the chair, save this one out so that you can find it again.

I referred to my reference photo quite often, I was looking for value – dark, light - I was also looking for color changes so that I could add those colors to my chair. The front of the chair there are blues and light violet colors as well as soft browns put those on and then lightly blended them together. You didn't want them to become a homogeneous color you just want them to be more of a mottled background for the detail. I went over it again with sharper edges and leaving the color as is to create that feeling of old wood texture.

When wood gets old where it has edges that are along the grain, there will be deep splits. Keep this in mind as you are putting in your detail. There will be more places where you can add the darker grooves around the edges of the wood, like at the end armrest, and at the end of the front part of the chair. I will do a demo on wood next week to go over specifics if you have trouble seeing this in the reference  photo, though I do suggest you look at old wood and study it to see all it intricacies.

I also based in the vines that run across the top of the painting, you do not have to do this if you don't want to, but I like the fact that it stops the viewers eye from wandering up the wall and out of the page so it's an eye stopper, even a little bit of it will help your painting.

I started the underpainting for the vines with the darkest green I had and added to it some of my dark indigo blue. Remember this is in shadows so it is going to be a very cool color. Then I slightly blended the two colors together and I found to lighter turquoise blue to suggest the leaves. I just scribbled them on, I did not try to draw individual leaves, I also tried to make the vines have an irregular shape as they came down the wall.

Using my light violet color I added in shapes to suggest flowers on the vines remember it's in shadow so you won't have any bright white colors and white will look blue or lavender in the shadows. To suggest some highlights on the flowers I found a lighter blue and just suggested some lighter edges to the flowers, there is no distinct light coming into this part of the painting so it isn't important other than to suggest some detail on the flowers.

This is where I ended for the day, there is still some work to be done on the paving stones and some of the vines and also the missing chunks of wall but we should be able to finish this up next week so keep painting and I will see you in class.

PASTEL CLASS FALL 2015 Project: Cool Refuge

In our last class we got most everything under painted except for the chair and the plants underneath the chair so if I started with the plants under the chair getting them under painted.

Have your reference photo in front of you so you can see what I'm talking about. If you look at the plants as they go under the chair they become cooler in color because they are not only in a shady area but there is also in a cast shadow from the chair creating a darker color shadow on the plant. To achieve this color I found a dark, cool green and basically scribbled the color in under the chair filling in where the plant will go. You want that erratic scribbled look to your chalk strokes so that it looks like a jumble of leaves under the chair, it's not a wall it’s a plant, you don't paint it in flat or vertical you want to create texture and you do that by scribbling in the color. As the plant comes out from under chair switch to a warmer but still darker green and create the underpainting for your plant. This plant is growing out of cracks in the walkway so suggest that your plant is also doing this with an irregular shape at the bottom. I will start adding a bit of detail later but leave this for now.

I also added plants into the pot in the back and the flower box using light green some medium green nothing really dark at least not yet and just suggested some plants. I didn't erase any of the color that I had already put for the window I just blended in the color that was there with the new color of greens.

For the curtains I took a darker blue and I just drew in the gap between the curtains leaving what was there as the curtain color adding a little bit of detail to the curtains with a lighter blue, nothing fancy. For the shadows from the planter box and the pot I just used a soft purple color it was almost grey.

Starting the highlight of the stones of the walkway, I started back by the door. They are a light yellow but not quite as light as the wall. I made little marks that were close together and jumbled up to suggest highlights on the tops of the stones in front of the door and down the front of the building. There is a shadow that is being cast by the shadowed wall down that walkway so as I got into that shadowed area I switched from yellow to a light orange, from the light orange, to red orange and from the red orange into burnt sienna and blues and from the burnt sienna and blues into blues and grays and most of my darker cooler colors this is still part of the underpainting but it is now starting to suggest the texture of a cobblestone walkway I will do more later as I am finishing up my painting. I did fill in underneath my chair after I had the chair based in I used the dark colors to help create the edges of the plant and also my chair.

Looking at the referencephoto I wanted to see on the chair where the dark and the lights were also I was looking to see if and where there were color changes in the wood. If you look at the photo you will see that the back of the chair is a darker, color gray color while the front of the chair and the two legs are lighter and warmer, they have more brown than them, this is how you need to paint your chair so that it doesn't look flat when you finish. Starting in the back part of the chair I took a medium dark grey and colored in the slats on the back of the chair, I also took a light lavender blue and lightly went over all of the slats as well and gently blended them together with my fingers. The seat of the chair and the front of the chair I used a soft, warm grey and a light grey blended those lightly together. The legs that come down from the arms were a very warm, almost, grey color my chalk said it was burnt sienna but it was a very light burnt sienna. I also used a little bit darker version of that color in shadowed areas along with that lavender blue color lightly blending them together.

The arms of the chair have some very dark wood. The top of the closer arm is very dark so I used a darker brown for that, I also used the darker brown for the shadow under the opposite arm and the shadow on the leg right below it near the ground and also for the leg at the back of the chair where it touches the ground on the close side.

Once I had the chair based in I wanted to work a little bit on those plants if you have a deep turquoise green color that is perfect for the shadow color of the plants underneath it needs to be just a little bit lighter than what you already have there. Again you are just going to make a bunch of random marks vaguely in the shape of leaves. Look at the photograph, mostly what you see is just a mass of color you if you look close you will see detail but really all you see is a jumble of green, that is what you need to try and recreate under your chair rather than painting each individual leaf it will look way too busy.

When you get finished putting in the shadowed leaves under the chair switch to a lighter medium green for the leaves that are outside of the chair, none of these leaves will get very bright because all of it is in the shadow so don't pick up a light green chalk, you want a medium light color and if it is slightly on the blue side the better. Do the same thing with this lighter color to create a jumble of shapes to create the impression of leaves. I also took my dark indigo blue color and added some shadows back into and underneath some of the plant to create more texture. I will be finishing this later.

This is where I left off so try to get your painting as close to this as you can and we will continue with our chair next time keep painting and I will see you in class.

PASTEL 2015 FALL CLASS Project: Cool Refuge

I hope everybody was able to get their project transferred to their pastel paper. I want to remind you that I am working on sanded paper that I made myself, I wanted to color my paper but it is not necessary for you to be working on a colored background or a sanded paper, it is just one of those “artist’s preferences”, it is not a requirement.

Starting with the wall in the back I used a lemon yellow and a very light yellow for that back wall starting with the darker yellow first. My strokes were going in every direction, this is an old stucco wall so I don't want nice neat strokes, I want it to look messy because that creates texture I want, and here's where my colored paper comes in, because any places that I miss it will show through and have an overall warm tone. If you are working on white paper that white becomes highlights if you are working on gray paper the grey becomes shadows so it's not really that important it's just preference.

First I covered the area with the more colorful of the two yellows and then I took the lighter yellow and went over it loosely again. In theory there should be both colors visible but when you stand back they blend together visually to create the sun lit color of the wall. If you don't have a light yellow and you only have a medium to a medium light yellow for the first color you can use white to lighten it but be sure that you are leaving texture and chalk marks so that it looks like old stucco.

The wall behind the chair is probably the same color as the sunlit wall but because it is in shadow it is a cooler color so you will need to find a cooler more ochre yellow for this wall but not too dark you can blend colors to get this if you don't have an ochre color, use a darker yellow with a touch of Brown in it and put it on the wall. Negative paint around the chair it doesn't hurt the chair to go over it but painting around the chair you'll know where your lines are for the chair.

Once you have the first color down the other color or the blended ochre color, you want to find a light purple. You don't want it to light but you don't want it too dark either, somewhere in the middle value and then lightly go over that whole wall with this purple once you have done that then you can blend in.

I like old dirty nasty ugly things because they're very interesting to paint and one of the things I find interesting about this photograph is the mold growing on the wall behind the chair you don't have to put it in but if you do, you want to find dark, ugly green and to that you can add some purple and some orange and some blue and just kind of muck it all together. Remember to make it an irregular shape because it's something that's growing naturally, it won't have a nice even pattern and just have fun with it. This adds character to your painting.

On the sunlit wall where the door is you can use that same medium purple that you were using on the shadowed wall in the recess where the door is and also where the window is. Use the chalk itself to blend the colors this leaves bits and pieces of the colors that are being mixed and it gives a better pastel look to your painting. The red door was two different dark reds: a darker one and a richer, lighter one. The darker red goes at the top because it might be in shadow, the lighter one starts about a third of the way from the top of the door. If you only have one red use what you have and then use blue or a darker purple up at the top to make the red appear to be in shadows.

I used a Siena color to base in the window frames and the planter box underneath it. I used

a blue grey for the window panes I will be doing more this is just the underpainting for the window. I did a demo for the little pot that sits by the door, I used a dark brown, a sienna color and orange starting with the dark side, I did about a third of that in the dark, switched to the Sienna color mixing into part of that dark and towards the sunny side and I picked up the orange and blended into the Sienna color then to the outside edge.  You can take a little bit of yellow or white to create a highlight on the pot. I did a similar thing with plants in that pot but I use greens instead, so it was a dark blue green, a medium green, and a light green. For the flowers on the plant are used a bright orange red for the sunny side, a medium red for the transition into the shadows, and then the dark red I used on the doors for the flowers that are on the shadowed side.

I started to do the walkway back near the door where the sun is shining using a golden ochre color it should be a nice bright, warm, light orange color and the strokes need to be parallel to the top and bottom but slightly rounded on the top to give the look of stones or flagstones that our walkway is made of. I came almost to the edge of my paper with this color and I was aware that there is a shadow being cast from the wall onto the walkway. That transition shadow is a bit warmer and lighter than the shadows around the chair for that shadow color I used a soft brown as well as some soft blues and purples. I went into parts of the light part of the transition and shadow colors for the walkway because I want a soft uneven edge where that shadow is falling over the rough texture of the walkway. See the example of how shadows follow the surface of what they are falling on.

In the darker areas around the chair, I was using dark browns, blues, purples throwing in some greens and blended them together. This is just the underpainting this is are going to be the shadow parts dark parts between the rocks or flagstones it will all have some nice texture once done you are done. You might want to leave the area where the plants are growing underneath the chair so that they don't get muddied up and that is where I left off for the day try to get as far as you can keep painting and I will see you in class.