Pastel Painting -Spring

This painting is in my normal style for pastel paintings but the subject is not one which I am really happy with. The background and water are fine but the bank on the LHS contains many individual flowers. I have not drawn/painted them in any botanical detail but still I was not in my comfort zone.

I have attempted to vary the size and tone to create some recession but not sure wether I am happy with the outcome, also it is far too divided into the four zones; forest on the far bank, sky, water and the yellow flowers on the near bank. I have used colour, sparingly, to try and bring some sort of overall belonging to these four zones. I am not however sure that the compostion works. Still, I am always happy to post my failures as well as my imagined successes. Let me know what you think.

Texture in pastel paintings

I am writing an article on the way that I achieve texture in my pastel paintings. I have posted many of them here on my blog but do not often include images of work in progress. In the article there are at least two with more than four stages included and some with two stages. It should be available in the next few days on Squidoo. I will include a link to this as soon as it is complete. In fact it will be here but will not be available until it is published.

I work in layers so that I can work the colours of the layers against each other as I build up the painting. It is a process I found for myself whilst learning how to use pastels but it is probably not new or unique but does give excellent results. As I worked it out for myself I like to think of it as "mine" but don't bite my head off.

My work space at the art group

set up for pastel work

note the pastel sticks, I always work with a limited palette

This shows the work after two layers of pastel, note the texture

After red and purple and black colours added, the start of the detail layers

At this point all layers are fixed

The moon is painted 

The sillouette of the tree is painted (these last details are not fixed)

You will be able to read fuller details in the article on Squidoo, I hope you will find it interesting.

This painting is now available on Zazzle as a canvas print and will soon be available on posters and other products.

Moonlight Gallery Wrap Canvas by artyfax
View other Pastel Canvas Prints

Another African sunset - pastel painting

If you have been following this blog, you will know that I love sunsets. I find the ideal medium is pastel. I have previously painted a series of african sunsets in watercolour, these were actually artists trading cards. For this attempt, I decided to use a little larger format - an A4 sized paper, actually an orange coloured paper. For our American cousins, this size is approximately 8.5 X 11.5 inches or a little less tall than foolscap.

Although there is lots of orange in the painting, I don't think that any of the original surface is left showing through the finished work.
Here is a view of the painting:-

A much larger version of the image can be seen on my Flickr photostream.


As with previous posts, I have included here details of the painting, so that you can see how I use the pastel to achieve the textures. I covered the upper part of the painting with an orangey-brown ( don't know the exact colour as the labels are missing - a good reason for leaving the labels on. However, I tend to use the sides of the broken up sticks so no chance of that. the lower part was covere initially in black. Both areas were blended with finger tips and fixed between coats to cover the paper absolutely. The pastel was again fixed. I find that this provides a fabulous tooth for the the later pastel colours, which I can build up to a significant thickness.

Here is a detail of the left-hand tree foliage:-

You can see here the sweep of the pastel, using the side and skipping across the surface of the sky. the sky had been completed by blending in a darker brown into the corners; two shades of yellow provided the lighter area, and white for the sun. The blending action may have affected the colouring of the various areas. These lighter colours were not fixed prior to the trees being painted on.

The tree branch crossing the sun:-

The actual branch is drawn much lighter than where it crosses a source of light, the sun. And the LH tree near the horizon:-

Here you can see the effect of blending-in various dark greys to produce the ground contours. the vegetation on the horizon itself was painted in with the edges of the sticks and pulled into the ground by rubbing with a fingertip.

The image may be seen on a wrapped canvas or on a number of smaller gifts in one of my Zazzle stores.
For UK based readers, see my UK Zazzle store, Artyfax

Snowdrops at Painswick in artists pastel

Another tree painting!

Well, I can't resist. We visited Painswick Roccoco Gardens (Cotswolds, UK) this week and I was knocked out by an "art in the garden" exhibition. Mostly sculpture and installations as you might expect but adult art classes are also run during the year. On the day of our visit, there was a small group of artists working with pastels on the subject of architectural paintings in a garden/natural setting. Not really my subject but it did inspire a little sketching and photographs in the gift shop gave me a perfect subject. Apparently, the gardens has the largest naturalistic planting of snowdrops in the UK. I was hooked.

This is a direct result as soon as I got home (well, I did help to unpack first):-

I think I quite like this one, of course I am still using the side of the pastel to create texture in the bulk of the painting:-

as you can see in this detail of trees. But I can't help thinking I may try this again and use this approach for the snowdrops (a maass of colour) rather thata trying to paint them individually as I have here.

Watch this space!

Across the fields in summer

Another pastel painting ffrom that book, "30 minute Pastels". This time a subject I have historically had problems with. I seem to manage well with aerial perspective - colours are my strongest point but put in any recognisable feature such as the fields here and I never seem to satisfy my own standards. I must admit that I tend to shy away from these sort of subjects and perhaps that is why I am still doing the same things wrong.

The new painting is basically an image of fields, distaant hedges, a track and a few dwellings, the red roofs of the buildings amongst all those yellows and greens is what attracted me to it; this is it:-

As I said this doesn't seem to feel right, I have done this type of scene as in this sketch book page of a view from a hotel we use on Cleeve Hill, in the Cotswolds:-

This at least looks to me as if it is drawn to scale, Maybe I shold persevere and do a lot more distant views. Anyway, here are a couple of details from the painting from the areas of the buildings. Did you notice the tiny red roofs at the top of the far hills - in the center of the horizon?

Youo can see in these details the texture I achieve with the side of the pastel, there are at least two greens in the fields in the lower image, with an added touch of a yellow. One point is that the details may be too detailed for distant objects and do not fit in with the overall effects of less detail with disstance. Again more practice and analysis.