Two Pastel Paintings, Mace Reeds and The River

I have completed two pastel painting this week, both were paintings which I was not sure of and left them to mature before adding final touches.

The first was from a photograph which had been posted by a friend who graciously gave permission for me to use as a reference for the piece. It is basically a photo of a mace reed bed and I was attracted to it because of the multitude of colours which became obvious as you looked at the photo. Very simple on the surface but became less so as you looked hard at it. Here is the painting:-

The range of greens and yellows/browns is actually impressive. The top border consists of reflections of dead and dying foliage at the edge of the pool. In fact I have tried to put some movement into the reeds by snaking the leaves rather than leaving them stiff and straight.

The second pastel is in fact taken from a watercolour painting I did when holidaying at a small village (three houses and a pub) called Cwym Cych, in North Wales close to Abersoch. The pastel is very high key (for me) and reflects the watercolour. The origjnal was a wet-into-wet piece with very few hard lines, so I was unsure whether it would translate into pastel, but here it is:-

If you look carefully at the piece you may see horizontal lines through the top of the LHS trees and across the sky. It appears that the paper was faulty as I have rubbed out the lines and when adding back the pastel the llines have reappeared. These things are sent to try us.

New Pastel Landscape Painting

I have been so busy lately that I have found it difficult to find time to paint. Fresh back from holiday in the Canary islands, I attended my art group tonight and came away with another painting, hope that you like it.

My colleagues saw this and though it had been painted using a dark/black paper. However, it is done on a white ground. I do create a background using dark colours before I start painting. I do this by layering several colours which I choose based on the effect I hope to achieve.

This painting was started with a covering of purple pastel, this was loosely rubbed in and fixed to avoid mixing with subsequent layers. the next layer was a dark blue. A less intense covering this time, but again rubbed in using the tips of my fingers and well fixed. A final background layer od black was then layed down.

Someone said, "why not use black paper?". The answer is that I find black paper too flat, I prefer the dark colour obtained by building up two or three layers.

In this case the black layer was not fixed and I painted the foliage into a soft black layer. There was some mixing but I kept it to a minimum and constantly wiped the pastel sticks used for the foliage to avoid any over mixing.

The final steps were to draw in the grey tree trunks, and add a shadow to the nearer trees; and then to add some linear marks to represent reeds, etc, by the bank of the water.

Reflections were added very simply by drawing down with the same colours used on the top part of the painting.

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.