Playing with paper

Fields at Dusk, 8 1/2x11 pastel, copyright 2012

Dairy Barn, Evening Sky 8 1/2x11 pastel, copyright 2012

Thanks to a post by pastelist Karen Margulis (check out her work - she's very good!) I have discovered a new pastel paper called Shizan.  It's handmade 100% cotton rag made from recycled material and is quite reasonably priced.  The texture is irregular, as are the edges and sometimes the size.  

With the first one I quickly discovered that it won't hold many layers, and vine charcoal does not work at all.  That was a bit frustrating, although it does make for a sort of vague, sketchy painting.  On the second one I added a single thin layer of pastel primer, which gave it enough tooth to hold more layers.  The texture and color of the paper still come through and force looser, sketchier images.  That's a good thing since I usually feel that my looser paintings are better.

Both of these paintings are from reference photos taken a few weeks ago when my husband was kind enough to drive me around just before sunset.  A native of the area, he chose the route down a winding, quiet road that ended at closed bridge (and haunted) bridge.   It was a beautiful drive, and I was able to get plenty of good photos that will hopefully find their way onto this new paper.

Glimpses

              Edge of Spring 7x5 pastel, copyright 2012   

                                                                   Towards Evening 7x5 pastel, copyright 2012


This weekend I played a bit with the smaller format for pastel while trying to work from memory.  These two views were glimpsed from the freeway on the way home after a soccer game Saturday evening.  There is definitely a learning curve involved in capturing a barely seen image on a small piece of paper.  Creating a sense of depth and getting the proportions right are probably the most challenging things.  Hopefully by summer I'll have a good grasp of it.











                                                 

Bank barn revisited

Bank Barn in Early Spring, Late Afternoon 12x9 pastel, copyright 2012

Hopefully no one is tired of this barn - I certainly am not.  It's funny how it seems to be constantly changing, even though I see it every day.  Right now I really only have this one view that is good, but as we are slowly clearing the area around it, I should be able to get different perspectives. 

There is an artist named Kevin Macpherson who created a series of paintings of the pond outside his house.  Over the course of five years he ended up with 386 small paintings.  I had thought that this might be somewhat obsessive of him, but I can now see that over the course of my life I could easily end up doing the same with this barn.  Perhaps there is a least a little bit of obsessiveness in every artist.

One sunrise, but not the same

      Sunrise, First of December 6x6 oil, copyright 2011

December Sunrise 12x9 pastel, copyright 2011

A first for me, two different paintings from the same reference photograph.  The first was just a quick study, painted the same day I took the photo.  It came out a bit softer and more muted, in part because I was spent perhaps 15 more minutes on it than I should have, and was starting to make mud.  I stopped when I realized it, made a few corrections then quit.  The second one I finished just yesterday, and perhaps overcompensated a bit for the earlier painting's softness, though the colors look a bit too saturated on my monitor.

Looking at the two of them together, I can't decide if one is really better than the other as both capture some aspects of the mood of the moment.  I'm not sure if it's the media or light in the studio or my subconscious that made them so different.  It's an exercise worth trying again with another photo.

Edit:  The pastel image has been revised, and is now a bit closer to the real thing.

Learning curve

Snow Shadows 6x6 oil, copyright 2011

Field of Snow 6x6 oil, copyright 2011

One of the good things about doing so many of these little paintings is that I am learning rather quckly what works and what doesn't work.  With these two there was a lot of the latter and a little bit of the former, particularly with the painting on the left.

With this one I decided to experiment a bit.  I've been coating the panels with a pastel primer, which is a clear acrylic base with very fine pumice mixed in.  I was curious what would happen if I didn't use the primer and just painted directly on the surface.  This is what happened:  the surface immediately soaked up all the oil from the paint, making it gum up and very difficult to move around.  This means I couldn't really blend the paint on the surface and if I messed with it too much it rolled into little balls.  No matter how many layers I put down, the effect was the same.  From now on I will always use a primer for oil paints on clayboard.

The second one turned out better since I did use the primer for it, along with a purple wash.  I also experimented a bit with a dry brush technique.  This works by using an essentially dry brush to blend the paint after it's laid down on the surface, for a softer look.  It can work well for backgrounds but if overused in the foreground it can make the image too fuzzy.  That was one thing that actually worked in this painting.   But while a large expanse of snow in the foreground and a straight horizontal line of trees in the background can make an interesting photograph, it can also make for a boring painting.

So now I know.