Landscape Painting in Pastels

Take a Look

2011-07-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

I've been painting in soft pastel for over 25 years. Long story short: no room to paint in pastels and an urge to move on. (God given!) I have a staggering pile of over 250 pastel paintings ~ credible, beautiful, fun artwork, bagged up and hidden away in the dark of my art cabinet. Take a look: Paintings for a Song

Corrales Acequia, 9" x 9"

Colorado Contrasts, 9" x 9"

Blue Ribbon

2010-12-30T11:20:00.000-08:00

Writing and freely publishing this book has been a blessing in so many ways, and trust me, it's a gift to you but it also gives to me. None of us is selfishly giving, and that in itself is the reason it's so good.

This morning I awoke early, blearily opened my email and saw a message from Katherine Tyrrell marked, 'you've won The Best Book by an Art Blogger Blue Ribbon (Making A Mark Awards 2010).' How nice, I thought. I hadn't had my coffee or spent time in the Bible, as I do every morning, and I was pleased. But it wasn't until I visited Making a Mark that I was absolutely bowled over by this generous recognition!

Please take a moment to go over to her blog and read the stunning company listed on that page, in order to understand how I feel right now. I must tell you that I have never considered myself and what I've written here as coming close to ranking alongside Richard McKinley or Deborah Paris. Their books are amazing! They're each consummate professionals, recognized widely and very authoritative. I respect each of them immensely and have had the pleasure of a certain amount of interaction with each of them at various times.

I think the thing that pleases me most is that it was the giving that tipped the balance. That wasn't me. That was the Lord. Some may not understand, while others no doubt do, but suffice it to say that I gave the book away as a gift to honor Jesus.

All the thanks I've received from people all over the world, and now this lovely Blue Ribbon, are His.

Deborah

Thanks...

2010-11-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to post my gratitude for the many well wishes and thanks I've received for the book.

It was a "labor of love", first from the standpoint of one who loves this vibrant and lively medium, and loves teaching others a few of the things I've learned about how to paint the landscape, but mostly out of love for Christ, who gave me a modicum of talent and provided me with the opportunities to explore and enjoy using pastels. It was His example that showed me so clearly that I wasn't to hold out, hold back or expect to gain income from the book, but that in giving it away I would gain more than I could ever expect otherwise. The truth of that is difficult to prove, but it's real nonetheless. Your thanks are truly appreciated.

Although due to family needs I have few chances to spend time in my pastel studio, I continue to teach classes once a week with a devoted group of students, and I pursue painting in gouache on my little dining room table. My mind roves over the landscape and technical areas I haven't yet explored in this book, and as a result I have several additional chapters brewing. I sincerely hope to write them and post them here as an appendix, of sorts.

If you have a question or idea you would like answered, or would like to propose an additional area of study in the landscape as its painted in pastels, I welcome your thoughts. Please understand that for the present I'm not in the process of writing, but as I teach and post on Today's Art Class blog, much of what I hope to write is beginning to coalesce.

And in the nearer future, I hope to begin offering online workshops in the landscape in pastel. Look for that to come to fruition in 2011 sometime. I'll post opportunities here as they arise, but if it's something you're interested in doing and you have a particular subject you'd like to explore (i.e. sunsets, reflections, snow, night, etc.) send an email to me at d.d.secor(at)gmail(dot)com and I'll add you to my mailing list.

If this is your first visit here, please page through the Table of Contents Links in the sidebar. If you're new to pastels, you might want to start at the beginning and explore the possibilities in order. Perhaps you're struggling with a particular subject and stumbled upon the information using an Internet search. Either way, I hope what you find here is of help and interest to you.

Every student is a blessing to me. Teaching is a delight, and freely sharing even more so.
Deborah

Gouache Paintings in Small Scale--launching a new medium

2010-10-19T16:36:00.000-07:00

Although I have not and do not plan to print or sell the book "Landscape Painting in Pastels", I have designed a modest little book containing some of my gouache landscapes, which I want to share with you.

It's quite a nice little softcover book. Most of the work shown is landscapes, although I included some of my still life and floral paintings. There are 68 paintings and three step-by-step demonstrations (all landscapes), as well as the text of the article that was in Watercolor Artist magazine in February, called Emergency Inspiration Kit. I've had a lot of paintings shown in magazines, due to my association as a writer for The Pastel Journal, The Artist's Magazine, and Watercolor Artist over the last 12 years, so I was a bit skeptical about the quality that an online publisher such as Blurb could produce. I worked hard to lay it out so that the paintings are life-sized. The book itself is only 7" x 7" in size. The intimacy of this scale is well suited to showcasing these 2.5" x 3.5" paintings.

So let me reiterate that although this is not a big, impressive book, it is a very nice little collection of photographs that pretty accurately represents my paintings, and I'm most pleased with it. I'm quite happy to offer it for sale to anyone who is interested. I kept the price modest, of course, and you can preview every page, so you'll know what you're getting.

I'm so pleased with the quality of this small book that I plan to design one devoted to a retrospective of my pastel landscapes in the near future, but I hope you'll enjoy seeing my most current work in gouache.

I hope you enjoy it.

Gouache Paintings in Small Scale by Deborah Secor | Make Your Own Book

The End

2010-10-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

Now that the book is concluded I want to acknowledge the help and support of my family and friends.

My husband Dan has been of immeasurable assistance to me every step of the way. He helps me to keep my priorities straight, guiding me gently and lovingly to see the Lord's will in my life. I can't tell you how many times he has taken a question into consideration, prayed and then come back to me with wonderful Scriptural support. We discussed at length publishing this book free of any charge, giving it away to all, something many people would have viewed as merely an opportunity for income. Dan saw the bigger spiritual picture first and urged me to live what I believe. Thank you, my love.

I also want to mention the ways my son, Chris, has been of service. He's one of my finest critics and most supportive fans. He's honestly looked at my work, asked some good questions, occasionally attended classes I taught, and has always reminded me that I'm an artist, in addition to being a child of God, wife, mom and daughter. Thank you, kiddo. Sometimes I need to remember that.

Each week as I've posted these chapters I've also relied on the expertise of Phil van Hulle. We met online at WetCanvas, where he volunteered his considerable experience and expertise in editing the chapters. Anyone who writes knows the value of excellent editing. At first I reviewed all the changes one by one, but in a very short time I recognized that each change clarified what I was saying and was very respectful of the content. Soon I simply clicked on the 'accept all changes' button quite confidently. Phil, thank you so much.

And I want to thank all of the readers up to now and yet to come. I've received so many wonderful messages from people telling me they are learning and trying new things. I'm delighted to know how these chapters help the beginner get started or the more experienced artist move forward. I've even heard form a couple of seasoned pros that they're enjoying the exploration of some subjects.Your encouragement means a lot to me. Thank you to each and every one of you.

I've said it for years to my students. Now let me say it to all of you:

It's looking good. Keep going!

Deborah Secor
Albuquerque
October 15, 2010

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE -- THE FIRST GALLERY

2010-10-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

Portfolio--present all one genre (remove the portrait.)

The long-planned day has arrived. Today is the day you approach your first gallery. You’ve painted those six excellent pieces, had your mentor critique them, and have them nicely framed. You’ve shopped the galleries to find the top four in your target market and found the one you most want to show in, as well as determining how it reviews work. You have business cards, a brochure with some details about you and your art, a résumé listing the few shows you’ve been in, and an artist’s statement, all organized in your portfolio alongside excellent photos of your artwork. Now all you need to do is show the work and pray like crazy it’s accepted.

If some of these suggestions seem daunting, I suggest you take some time to study information devoted to marketing your work. There are some excellent resources in print and online explaining the ins and outs of making cards, brochures, portfolios and prints, not to mention articles in arts magazines with handy tips and cost-cutting information. Be sure that whatever you do fits your personality and artwork. Try to think things through from the point of view of the gallery owner or director before entering the door.

I suggest framing five paintings in three sizes, two small, two medium and one large. Show paintings that have a cohesive look, presenting a nice show hanging together on a wall.

Choose paintings that show consistent style. (Yes, you do have a style, even if you can’t identify it. Ask someone else to help you select the work if you can’t be objective yourself).
Select work that overlaps certain colors or themes, but isn’t all identical (not six sunset paintings). Even if it’s your favorite painting ever and won a prize at the fair, if it sticks out as being too different it won’t complement the showing.
Stick with one genre: all figures in the landscape, all still life, all portraits. This gives the gallery an identifier they can use to sell your work. Later you may add other subject matter.
Be sure that your paintings are framed in a style that suits the area. Look around at what’s selling before you frame your work and take mat color and style of frame into consideration. Frame all of the work in similar frames and mat colors. You want a consistent, professional look, not a garage sale look.
Have reasonable prices in mind for each piece, taking into consideration the 50 percent commission fee you’ll likely give the gallery. Once accepted, don’t hesitate to ask the gallery director or owner whether these prices are in line with what she expects to get, or whether they want you to go higher or lower. Be flexible -- you’re getting valuable advice from a professional you plan to do business with, so such questions show you respect them.

Contact the gallery via e-mail, or call on a weekday morning, to ask about their policy for viewing new artwork. Some galleries schedule a review day; others are more flexible. You will most likely hear that they are not seeking new artists at this time. Don’t let that discourage you.

ON THE DAY

If you are given a review date, ask what to prepare and arrive on time with everything they request. If you decide to walk in and discuss the possibility of showing with a gallery director, qualify the galleries you’ve chosen before going there. Make sure it’s the right place, or at least in your top four choices.

Prepare to go into the gallery at a very quiet time of day, with a relatively small portfolio. Dress professionally, relative to the market you’re entering. Don’t go in your paint spattered, ripped jeans or lug in a large framed painting. You should be able to carry your portfolio in one hand or on a strap over your shoulder. The sales clerk or director will spot you as an artist a mile off, so don’t try to pretend to be a shopper. Ask if it’s possible to speak to the director or owner. As soon as she approaches, tell her your name and identify yourself as an artist looking for representation. Smile, look her in the eye and be prepared to hear that they are not accepting work at this time. Ask when and how she reviews work. Have a business card ready to hand her with a smile, and offer to leave photographs, if she seems interested. Prepare a small photograph album containing your ten best paintings in a cohesive style, labeled with title, size, and medium. List your contact information inside and offer to leave it with the director if she isn’t open to reviewing work.

If she’s open to discussion, take the time to talk. Ask questions about the work or the gallery. A little schmoozing is acceptable as long as it doesn’t take too much time and doesn’t draw the director away from clients. Ask if you can show the photos of your work, but have a small framed painting inside your portfolio, too. When you open the zipper to retrieve your photo album, make sure your painting is visible. If she is interested in seeing your artwork, do not spread paintings around the gallery floor unless the director tells you to, and never, ever interrupt anyone working with clients. You’re there to support the work of the gallery. Your spouse or a friend should help you retrieve paintings, and hold back all but the two you carry in—your two best, of course.

As you show the work, talk about what you do. If this idea is hard for you, discuss with your mentor or a friend two things you can point out about each painting. You want to give the gallery a sales pitch they can give to a client, something like the location of the subject matter, a special color you used, or an experience you had painting it.

ACCEPTED

The director just asked you to consign work. Now what? Be prepared to read over any consignment contract the gallery may want signed, which is for your protection as well as theirs. Don’t quibble over details unless you feel that what they’re suggesting is outside the norm. Read sample contracts so that you’re clear on what’s standard. There are many showing online that you can peruse ahead of time.

Carry two copies of a short, simple consignment form in your portfolio, left blank so that you can fill in the gallery name and address, as well as the titles, sizes and prices of your paintings, should the owner want to take the work immediately. Most often a gallery will offer you a form, since paperwork is part of what you’re paying them to do. Don’t be afraid to ask about policies such as how often the gallery pays its artists and whether it sends notice when nothing has sold. (Most don’t.) This is professional and expected.

They want to accept all your paintings today and ask if you can deliver a few more in a week or two. Many galleries prefer to have some back stock so that they can rotate work or show interested customers more paintings. Be prepared ahead of time. Have three or four additional paintings stored at home ready to frame. If you don’t have the work, be honest and let them know when you can deliver it. Do not run home to paint four more and try to deliver them in a week. It won’t work, trust me. If you have work available, show photographs or agree to send digital shots via e-mail as soon as you can. It’s best to develop a good working relationship with the gallery by asking which paintings the owners want to show. You can always slip in a couple of your other painting subjects when you consign, if you don’t mind framing them at the risk of having them turned down. Determine some standard sizes you will use so that you can replace one painting with another.

It’s always a good idea to ask when the gallery would prefer to accept deliveries of your paintings. Some busy galleries won’t consign on Saturday afternoon, for instance, so be sure to let them know when to expect you, and arrive on time. Whenever you show up at the gallery, carry framed work in with cardboard corners in place. (I carried my framed work in homemade canvas bags for years, sized to accommodate three or more paintings that I could easily transport myself. This allowed me to come in quietly and unobtrusively, without making too many trips, and I could quickly corral corners to carry away when finished.) Ask where they would like you to place the paintings. Stack your consigned paintings in one spot and request that the sales clerk or director sign your already-filled-out consignment form as you count and read the titles of the paintings to her. You can always line out anything that isn’t consigned, and initial beside the title, if she doesn’t want it. Even if the gallery has paperwork it wants filled out, I suggest you have a neat little consignment form of your own. If nothing else, they can copy titles and sizes from your typed copy. Save them time, trouble and hassle!

Once your business is transacted, clear out anything taking up space, and if you have time return to the gallery to look at the work. Notice the prices, review the framing styles, look at the lighting, the displays, etc. You’re in partnership with the gallery to sell work, so take note of the business. Ask what’s selling, and admire the work you see. Keep a consignment list in your pocket and check your inventory to see that it’s displayed, that the price is correct, and that it’s clean and well-lighted. If needed, problems with any of these issues can be taken up later, over the phone or via e-mail. Take a photograph of the wall holding your work for future reference, if the gallery doesn’t object.

CONCLUSION

There’s far more to dealing with galleries than I can detail here, of course. Some have likened a gallery-artist relationship to marriage, and there’s some truth to that -- aside from “‘til death do us part.” Your job is to provide good work, ready to display, in a timely fashion. Their job is to represent you well and show and sell your work. Each partner must do the job well to make the relationship flourish.

When you encounter problems, think through how you want to solve things and approach the gallery personnel with respect. Remember that you’re one of many artists they deal with, so try to maintain a strong working relationship that’s built on mutual benefits. Determine that above all, as much as it depends on you, you’ll keep your word and try to consider things from the other’s point of view.

When you find a trusted gallery owner who can market your work well, you may develop a longtime working relationship that benefits both of you. The bottom line is to always seek out how you can support the gallery. Be sure to express your appreciation for the hard work the owners do. Thank them for sales -- send an e-mail or write a little note once in a while. You are in this together.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR -- ART FAIRS

2010-09-29T15:27:00.000-07:00

You’ve been painting in pastels for a while now and have taken some classes and workshops. Your teachers have encouraged you, some of your work has been accepted to a national show, and even though you haven’t won any prizes you know it’s time to start making a little money with your art. A good next step might be to begin with an art fair. Art fairs, or booth shows, are a great place to embark on selling. Shows allow you to step into the sales arena with a relatively modest cash outlay, effectively introduce your work to a local audience that can be receptive and supportive, and help you find the price range and niche your work may fill in the marketplace. Being accepted to a fair may be the boost you need to get your paintings finished, framed, priced and ready to sell, and could provide the opportunity you need to be seen by galleries as a selling artist.

First consider local shows. If you can, attend the show and take detailed notes about what you see. Try to picture yourself showing there. Ask the promoters or participating artists what has been provided. If this is an outdoor show, find out whether the artists supply everything from the ground up or if a structure is provided. Notice whether aluminum display panels, pegboard sheets or other walls are in place. Most of the time there are small tables or cabinets where customers may pick up cards or brochures and the artist writes up sales. Take note of the height, style, and sizes used to decide what works best. Look at the chairs. A tall, folding director’s chair is often the best choice, as it allows the artist to sit at eye level with customers.

Once you’ve found a show that interests you, request a prospectus. The application should tell you a lot about the show, even if you haven’t been able to attend. For instance, is the show held outdoors or indoors? Do you have to provide your own display system or tent? If this is an outdoor show you’ll need weather protection for your pastel paintings. Determine whether you can you drive up to a booth to drop things off, or will have to carry everything in from a parking area. Find out the cost of entering the show and the cost of the booth, including all your options. In a juried show you submit slides or photographs, or present examples of your work, and there’s usually a jury fee that is separate from the booth fee. You need to know exactly what you will get for your investment.

You also want to know a few things about the show and its history. How long has the show been in business? A successful show will have a good track record. How many artists do the promoters plan to host? You’ll be sharing the available dollars with the other exhibitors. Do they intend to balance art and craft exhibitors, or is this exclusively a painting show? The kind of work featured will determine the response from the community. Notice how many days the show runs and what hours it’s open to the public, and find out whether you may safely and confidently leave your paintings in your booth overnight or whether you’ll need to take down the show each day. If you were able to attend the show, refer back to your notes. What was the venue and were there many people attending? What physical set-up worked best? Were there walls or curtains dividing the booths? Most importantly, could you picture showing your art there?

Once you have applied to and been accepted to a fair, you have some important decisions to make. You will need to look into the various methods for displaying your work. Most artists use flexible, lightweight display panels that may be broken down and carried easily, but provide attractive wall space. Outdoor fairs often require you to provide your own tent, as well. Your notes should give you some ideas of what artists do at these shows. Consider the need for lighting, if the show continues into the evening hours. Be prepared to deal with weather considerations, as well.

You need to exhibit a range of sizes and prices. If you’ve already sold work in an exhibit use that as your foundational price. If not, you’ll need to decide on a fair price for your work. Review the notes you took where you carefully logged the prices of work similar to your own and be fair in your pricing. Don’t undersell too much or unduly overvalue your paintings. Decide whether you are willing to sell your pastels without a frame and if so at what price. Think about the possibility of taking commissions for your paintings if your subject matter warrants. If you’re willing to do this, establish your deposit and payment policy.

A fair is a wonderful opportunity to advertise your work. Show promoters may offer you a chance to advertise in their bulletin, an effective way to get your name in front of everyone who attends. Be certain to have excellent business cards with a color photograph of one of your paintings, as well as your name, phone, e-mail address and web page on them. A brochure that tells about your history as an artist and features more of your work can be made on your computer. You can use the show as a chance to build your mailing list, so put out a guest book where customers can record their name, e-mail or mailing address and comments. Be sure to send thank-you notes to anyone who buys a painting, no matter the size or price. This is a great way to build good customer relations in your community so that you can continue to enjoy the life of a selling artist.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE -- CRITICIZE YOUR WORK

2010-09-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

Self-criticism is a skill every artist needs to develop. The ability to look at your work dispassionately and see clearly its strengths and weaknesses is a tool that serves the artist as much as her easel or palette. The goal is to be honest without being overly brutal -- or too lenient.

It’s difficult to determine why it’s easier to dislike certain parts of a painting than it is to find those we value. However, most of us can go more quickly and easily to the things we don’t like about a piece. We need to develop a means by which we can evaluate the painting, something we can rely upon to help us find problems and see where we need to enhance our skills.

THE GOAL

Each painting should have an objective, some target you’re aiming at in this single piece. Setting goals helps you know where you’re headed and how close you came to hitting the mark. Your goal might be broad, such as painting realistically or capturing the quality of an object or mood of a place. Or it could be as specific as having put the detail in all the right places or utilized heightened contrast in value. You might be attempting to paint new subject matter, say landscapes, or trying out a new kind of paper or other materials. You might be attempting to use more brilliant color or broken color, or perhaps you need to concentrate on painting foregrounds or perfecting trees. Whatever the issue, first ask yourself where you were heading and where you ended up.

You must try more than one painting to achieve any goal. Challenges take work and time. If after your first attempt you’re not satisfied, look carefully for those things that worked and why they worked, then paint another one that aims at the same purpose. Most of us are not likely to succeed on the first try -- and even when we do, that probably will not give us the skill to be able to do it again. So don’t give up. Dare to keep on trying.

Hold onto your first attempts at something new in order to be able to compare later on. Consider this “research and development” a good way to approach something new. You can more clearly evaluate your progress when you have a basis for comparison. So slide the first attempt or two under the bed or into the back of the portfolio and pull them out later on so that you can see how far you have come.

THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF

Be willing to learn things you don’t know. This is a lot like walking to the edge of a cliff in the fog, not knowing how far you might fall. Until you’re willing to risk failure, trying something that you’ve never done before or something that you have had no success with in the past, you can never learn it. Many times we stand at the edge of the thing we don’t know and imagine it to be a cliff when it’s only a curb. The failure can be relatively painless in the face of what we can learn from going there. After all, how much do we learn from success and how much from failure? A baby learning to walk falls down quite a lot, but once he finds his balance he uses the skill for a lifetime. We will assuredly use the skills we develop, but we learn the most when are in the fumbling, falling-down stage.

DO NOT TOUCH

Once you think your new painting is fairly complete, spend some time looking at it, reviewing the goals you set. This time should be spent only looking, not making changes. Let your eye come to see the strengths of the painting over a period of time. This might mean that instead of setting it on the easel to review, where you could be tempted to grab a pastel to correct it too soon, you should instead set it somewhere away from the studio. Spend time with the piece, walking past it at different times of the day, in different lighting situations. Live with it a while until you have some sense of the good things you see there, as well as the things you know need changing.

When you see what needs to be changed, think about the solutions you might use. Too often in our haste to rid the painting of the offending portion we snatch a color and cover it up or wipe out that part altogether without taking the time to think. Stop and consider at least two or three possible ways to correct the problem. If color is the difficulty, what additional colors layered over might cure it or what color might replace the existing one? If it is a compositional problem, how might you rearrange the elements? Whatever the trouble, taking the time to think of several ways to treat it will help increase the knowledge and skills you must have as an artist.

When you’ve arrived at a decision about the changes to make, try the first way. If that seems not to correct the issue, try the next solution. Rational, well thought-out decisions are the instruments by which we learn.

FALL OUT OF LOVE

Never become so devoted to any one part of a painting that you’re unwilling to sacrifice it to the betterment of the entire work. These little icons of success can often be the obstacles that hold us back from progressing. No matter how successfully painted, if the sheen of light on the river is too light in value, distracting the eye from the center of interest, you must take it out. No matter how beautifully rendered the lacy edge of the foliage, if the sky shining from behind is too dark, it must be replaced. Too often we esteem the one part that succeeds and forget to reach toward the success of the whole.

Most of us tend to be somewhat enamored of those paintings that make it past the first few revisions. We’ve put considerable time into the painting and may find irresistible what has been achieved. Now we should wait until we have fallen out of love with the piece before continuing to evaluate it. This might be a good time to put the painting away for a long enough time that you forget that first blush of pleasure. When you can look at it more dispassionately, in a manner that’s detached enough to admit the flaws alongside the strong points, bring it out for a final evaluation.

THE CRITIC

Now is the time the painting should be subjected to the opinions or advice of the critic you select. Learning self-criticism does not mean you never ask another person to criticize your work. In fact, having a critic you trust is important. You can learn a lot about how and what to criticize by working with a good critic.

Find someone who can consistently help you grow and has your best interests at heart to help you evaluate your work. Whether this is an artist friend or a professional teacher you pay to critique a small body of work, do not neglect this aspect of learning and evaluation. You have to seek criticism in order to grow.

Do not ask for an opinion about a painting or body of work until you are ready to hear and use the advice. Nothing is gained by asking for guidance you intend to refute. To defeat this, be sure you know what you value in the piece and what parts you want help changing. Instead of approaching the critic with a helpless “I just don’t know what to do” attitude, it might be more helpful if you point out those things that please you and are working, as well as those you feel need improvement.

The opinion of an untrained critic can be valuable as well. If a neighbor steps into your studio, ask what she thinks of some aspect of your piece. Again, this might work best if it’s specific rather than general. Asking a question about the color or composition elicits a less ambiguous reply, but be open to hearing whatever comments come. Children can be particularly candid -- and often helpful in their forthrightness if the artist is willing to be open.

A LIFETIME SKILL

Criticizing your work is a skill that must be developed alongside the painting techniques you need to succeed. Being able to evaluate what works and why, as well as what needs improvement, is an ability you can develop with practice.

Set goals and remain open to possibilities. Be willing to take risks and look for the things you need to learn or improve. Take the time you need to see your strengths and weaknesses, to decide rationally on a course of action and pursue it or try varying solutions. Find a critic you trust and listen to the advice you receive.

As an artist, you have a lifetime of challenges and new growth ahead. Do not neglect the art of self-critique.

How to Criticize Your Own Painting

Before you change anything...

As you look at a new painting consider many possibilities before changing anything. Analyze these and consciously decide on changes before doing anything. Then ask the following three questions:

1. Where are the places of harmony and movement? What has succeeded? Which part is most pleasing to you and why? Are there places that you especially like?

2. Where are the places that jump out? What causes this? Think of two or three ways to correct the problem.

You may stop here and make the needed changes if you feel you have enough ideas and information to go on. If not, try step three, but be sure you know what you like and don’t like before asking anyone else.

3. Show the painting to a critic. This should be someone you trust to tell you the truth, trained or untrained, or can be someone off the street whose opinion you know nothing about. The idea is to get a fresh viewpoint, not to determine the majority opinion. Ask people to help you see problem areas before you make changes, then develop a plan and learn from what you try. This is a way to aid in the development of your own opinion.

Do not stand in front of a painting and “try things.” This rarely results in improvement. Instead, make brief note of the possible changes in each piece and consider what will happen if you try them. Willy-nilly changes sometimes work, but often you can’t sort out why.

Take the time to ask questions about the painting, then move around and try different ways of looking at it before you pick up a pastel.

When you’re ready, make the needed adjustments.

Questions to ASK about the painting

What was my goal in this painting? What is it about the place or the photograph that made me want to paint it?

Was there a feeling or mood I wanted to express here? Did I succeed?

What is my center of interest or focal point?

Have I used detail in the appropriate places to enhance the focal point, or is the painting overly detailed and boring?

Are there a pleasing variety of textures and lines? Do they enhance the focal point or overwhelm it?

Is there a good range of light to dark values? Do they form an interesting abstract pattern?

Where is the area of highest contrast? Where do the darkest dark and the lightest light come closest together? Is this enhancing the area of greatest interest?

Are the four landscape values presented accurately? Is the sky light, the ground medium-light, the mountains medium dark and the trees dark? If not, why not?

What palette of colors have I used? Are the colors in this painting generally bright, muted, dark or light? Is it mostly warm or cool? Would some variation improve it?

Did I begin with a strong underlying abstraction of shapes? Did I retain them throughout the painting? How might I improve this in the future?

Is the shape and size of the paper best suited to this composition? Would this painting be stronger if I changed the format?

What movement occurs in the painting? Is it interesting? Is it organized and complete? How could I vary the shapes to improve the movement?

Are the negative shapes in this piece interesting?

Are there a compositional X that traps the eye or a V that points the eye off the page?

Do I have a visual treat at the apex of any visual path such as a road or stream? Does it move the eye or stop it?

Is the linear perspective correct?

Is the aerial perspective correct -- lighter, bluer, less detail, less contrast, softer edges? Is there a sense of “air” no matter how shallow the depth?

Are there little objects sitting on the windowsill of the painting?

Are there any places where the painting is unresolved and mysterious?

Are there places where color jumps out or there are needlessly interesting details?

Are there any haloes?

Are there any wallpaper patterns?

Is there any object cut in half or less? If so, why?

Are there any unintended repetitive shapes?

Different ways to LOOK at the painting

Squint your eyes to lose detail. Is the underlying design of shapes and values strong?

Use a red filter to look at your painting, your photo or at the world so that you can see values. Remember that any reds will turn white or very light in value.

Stand back far enough that your painting looks no larger than a postage stamp, even if you have trouble seeing that far. Take ten steps closer. What has changed? Take ten steps closer. What has changed? Repeat. Notice how distance changes your perceptions. At what distance is the painting strongest and why?

Trace the movement by closing your eyes for a minute, then tracking where your eye begins and ends in your painting. Try this several times until your eye moves easily around the composition. Name the kind of movement: horizontal, vertical, circular, etc.

Look at the painting using only your peripheral vision. Stare at a point to the side of it.

Turn your painting upside down and sideways. Look for the abstract elements of color and design.

Look at your painting in a mirror or use a reducing glass or binoculars turned backward. Look for the abstract shapes.

Put a mat around the painting or use wide masking tape to make a mat to cover any vivid color on the edge of your painting.

Crop parts of the painting to see if it improves.

Put your painting in direct sunlight. What happens to the colors?

Put your painting under artificial light at night and use a dimmer switch to see how the light levels change it.

Remember...

Have more than one painting to work on at any time. Give your mind room to wander from subject to subject as your mood changes.

Find your strengths and don’t try to do someone else’s work. Emulate techniques. Develop your own style.

Let go of failure and look to the future.

Relax. Have fun. Learn. Grow. Experiment.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO -- FROM STUDIO TO PLEIN AIR

2010-09-15T08:05:00.000-07:00

Poblanos Autumn, 12" x 9"

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal where this was originally published.)

A man stands at his easel painting the breathtaking vista before him. The sky is bright blue, the day calm and warm. His black umbrella punctuates a field of green and yellow grass near shady cottonwood trees. The mountains are a sweep of cobalt and lavender, topped with crisp white clouds. It looks ideal. No wind. No rain. No bugs. No dust. It’s no wonder painters wish to paint outside on such a glorious day.

But the fact is that it can be uncomfortable painting “en plein air”—meaning on location. Dust does blow, bugs do bite, the sky darkens or the wind blows. It takes planning and energy to drag the easel, pastels and umbrella to the car, drive to a location, lug your gear to a spot, set it up and take it down, then drive home again, usually tired and sometimes unsatisfied with the day’s work.

Working in the studio is usually far less challenging than location work. There, you can control the environment and are able to settle down to work. Lighting conditions remain stable and you can take the time to carefully plan and execute a painting, which can be difficult when working outside. There are no burrs clinging to your socks or stray dogs wandering under your easel, no wind or rain to contend with. Studio work is much less physical, and if nothing comes of the day’s work at least you haven’t spent gas money to do it.

So why do so many painters go through all that to paint outside?

It’s simpler to paint a striking locale from a photograph, yet open-air paintings have a depth and range of color impossible to find in any photograph. Photographs taken at the same time and location look accurate but often are unsatisfying. We’ve come to believe that the color in a photograph is somehow more real, when in fact the interpretation of colors that the artist brings to a painting is far more valid. Shadows are frequently too dark or light areas washed out in a photograph. Paintings made on location have an appealing variety of colors, in shadow or sunlight.

Color is made from light. Painting in the natural sunlight reveals the complexity of the colors all around us. As you look into the shadows you can see details, though they are cooler and darker in value, while the light areas are luminous and glowing. Although most painters prefer to work under the shade of an umbrella or in the solid cast shadow of a building or other object, it’s not impossible to stand in the open sunlight and paint. Light and color go hand in hand. Light is the key to color, which is in turn the key to mood in a painting.

Still, plein air painting takes some getting used to. The almost overwhelming amount of subject matter can result in crowded paintings with no focal area. No piece of paper is adequate to the task of painting the whole world -- or even the western horizon alone. It’s necessary to limit the scope of what you paint on location. Rather than trying to do a painting of the road that leads to the house with the shade trees and flower garden, and the mountains beyond that with the clouds building up to a storm, it’s better to select only parts to paint. Choose the road leading to the house one day. Move closer and paint the garden another day. Then take on the mountains and clouds on a day when they are spectacular.

Even within the context of your chosen subject -- say the mountains and clouds -- use some tried-and-true methods to limit what you paint. Frame the world with your hands or use mat corners to block out portions until you can see clearly what will fit on the paper. Select a visual landmark where you can place your viewfinder, putting the corners in the same position repeatedly so that you can renew acquaintance with your selected bit of the world when needed. Some artists like to look through an empty slide mount. Because you have to close one eye to do this, your field of vision flattens, which sometimes makes it easier to see shapes as interlocking puzzle pieces.

Paintings composed using photographs often look different from those painted outdoors. They contain details that are easily ignored when painting on location, such as the grass directly in front of the easel and the branch overhead that protrudes into the picture plane. The camera lens puts the world out at arm’s length, pushing everything away from the viewer, changing the perspective. The point of view of a plein air painting seems grounded, as though you can sense the easel sitting in the dirt, and extraneous details are easily ignored.

Instead of attempting to complete a painting while on location, it might help to begin by making color and composition sketches on site. When you work quickly and freely you are freed from the desire to paint the perfect finished version of the view. Take along your camera to record details of the place but paint to record your personal response to the colors you see and select the viewpoint and details you want to include. The photographs then become an aid to your personal vision rather than commanding the image. In the studio you can use both photos and sketches to make a finished painting.

Once you discover the pleasure of painting on location and see the merits of color and composition done there, in all likelihood you will be willing to pack your gear and drive out to that special spot or spend time searching out a new one. The delight of seeing and the pleasure of recording your surroundings will begin to outweigh any annoyance and distraction you find there. You probably won’t abandon your studio but you will likely discover that location work strengthens what you do in the studio.

One day you may find yourself standing in a green and yellow field under an umbrella, painting cobalt mountains on a perfect day. No wind. No rain. No bugs. No dust. Then you will know why painters go out on location so often.

Coronado, 12" x 9"

________________

Materials for Plein Air

lightweight, portable easel
stone sack or empty gallon jug with twine
small palette of pastels (~125 half sticks)
small drawing board, clips, clamps
paper cut to 9x12" or smaller
11x14" newsprint pad with clips OR Clearbags (to transport paintings)
umbrella, clamps
spray bottle (to keep cool)
camera, sketchbook, charcoal, pencils, viewfinder, red filter
wet wipes, paper towels, tape, tools
sunscreen, bug spray, hat OR gloves, scarf, extra socks, jacket
large plastic bags (rain protection, garbage)
cooler, water
folding chair (if watching a demonstration)

Back yard plein air.

Many people ask me about my easel and palette setup for plein air. I keep it fairly simple. I use the Anderson Swivel Easel, which works perfectly for my height (5'4"), and an old Rembrandt box filled with half-sticks and smaller bits of pastels that I open and set on top of the easel. I carry most of my supplies in a rolling box. (I have carried things in my backpack, too, but I do that less often now.) I try to keep things simple, lightweight and portable, although I pack a lot into my car so I have it when I need it.

Painting with mast flat.

My well used plein air palette.

I enjoy the Anderson Swivel Easel because I can swivel the mast around 360 degrees, allowing me to simply turn another direction without rearranging my easel, or lay it down flat and paint looking over it, standing to one side of the easel. (In windy conditions this can be quite helpful.) It's lightweight, only around nine pounds empty. I often cut paper and tape it in place on my board, one piece on top of the next, so that I can start painting the moment I arrive on location. Then I simply remove that piece, slip in into the newsprint pad or a Clearbag to transport without smearing, and I'm ready to begin the next one.

I prefer to do color sketches rather than trying to make a "finished" painting. I record the scene as soon as I'm set up and starting to sketch, taking a photo as I see the view from the easel. I record another shot at the end of the hour (if I paint that long--rarely any longer), so that I have two photos and a color sketch to use in the studio if/when I make a finished painting. However, having freed myself from the mental straitjacket of painting to a finish on location, ironically I'm far more inclined to paint what I consider to be finished work. The three paintings shown here, for instance, were painted entirely on location, with no further work in the studio.

Corrales Acequia, 9" x 9"

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE – UNDERPAINTING IN COMPLEMENTS

2010-09-08T09:05:00.001-07:00

Mesa Meadow, 18" x 12"

Color and value are inextricably intertwined. They're very much like a hand in a glove; although the glove exists independently in the material world, it does not function until the hand is inside it. So it is with the glove of color, which needs the hand of value to motivate it. Artists rely on color as one of the fundamental elements of painting. Value is an issue that comes up as the artist advances in skill and consideration of the theory of painting. Value or tone, which is the lightness or darkness of any color, is independent and exists with or without color. It's black and white and all grays in between, as well as all of the dark to light tones of any given color. It's an essential component of any color. You cannot separate color from its value, but you can and should consider value as an issue of primary importance, separate from color.

Understanding value can strengthen color. Most artists use color easily, almost without thinking, far more often than they consider the underlying, driving force of value. This doesn’t mean that they disregard value -- quite the contrary. Value is so intimately linked to color that they seem not to consider the hand apart from the glove. As the artist progresses through her career, value sneaks in, becoming increasingly important. As fundamental as it is, value is often left to the consideration of the more experienced painter. This should not be a surprise since, as in so many other disciplines, the further one goes into the depths the more elemental the concepts become. Still, the most experienced painter can learn new things, which is why art is one of the richest and most varied of pursuits and may continue for a lifetime.

One way to come to understand the interdependence of color and value is to plan a painting that utilizes only complementary colors but retains the original value of each of those colors. In doing this you will come to see the value or tone of the color more exactly as you challenge yourself to duplicate it while using its complement. Spend some time looking at a painting you have recently completed. Select one of the colors you used and name its complement. In your mind begin to choose the complements. If the sky is blue, it becomes orange. The green tree is now red, the yellow grasses are purple, the white clouds are, surprisingly, white. Why? Because the complement of white is not black. White is a value, in this case, not a color. If you’ve retained the correct values of the colors in your mental painting, they haven’t shifted except in color. If the clouds aren’t really white, but are a very light pink with touches of pale purple and blue, they become very light green with touches of pale yellow and orange. If they’re white, they stay white. This exercise will help you begin to think of value and color independently, and will increase your awareness of the multiple colors you can use in any value range. It will aid you in learning how to layer or lay side by side different colors of the same or similar value in any one tonal area.

In doing this painting it’s best to have two photographs from which to work, the original color photo and an excellent grayscale copy of it that accurately shows a range of dark to light values. The photograph is helpful because you’re freed from making compositional decisions and are also able to study the colors separately from their values. This is strictly an experiment in value and color. Using the grayscale photograph, do an underdrawing or value study of the image using black, white and grays. Accurately render the tones. This can become an elegant rendition of the scene that develops your sense of colors as values. As you draw, you’re able to see the color of the object you are depicting in your mind’s eye, which helps you identify its value.

White Wallis paper toned with gray pastel.

Charcoal underdrawing on gray-toned Wallis paper.

Now, looking at the color photograph and using a color wheel, select and lay down the opposite color of the natural one. Be careful to select the correct value, whether a light, medium or dark tone. It’s helpful to use a color wheel to find these complements at first. Find the blue of the sky and lay your finger on the orange as you seek out the right shade.

Once you have placed a single layer of the complementary colors in the proper values all over your paper, put the color photograph out of sight. If you’re looking at a photograph of a blue sky it’s very difficult to discipline yourself to pick up orange, but if you have already chosen the new colors and briefly recorded them in place, it’s easy to look at the black and white copy to paint. Forget the colors in nature now, and begin to expand your painting using the correct values and opposite colors on the color wheel. Think of the purple mountains as yellow. You already have a layer of yellow in place so you no longer need to think about that. What color is a dark yellow? Most yellows tend to shift to a muddy brownish-green as they darken, so choose a dark gold or yellow-green instead. Make it dark enough, sacrificing the exact complement to the correct value if necessary. The important thing here is to get the appropriate darkness or lightness of the color while not relying on the real color to find it. When you lean on the colors of the natural world, you’re dismissing value. Remember the hand and glove effect of value and color.

Complement layer in place.

You might spend some time completing this complement painting. It will almost certainly look like some unfamiliar place or thing, with all the colors shifted out of the world we see. Don't be concerned if you feel that it's unsettling and looks wrong to you. Relax and have fun in this alien place. A glowing pale orange sky, billowing white clouds with yellow shadows, dark reddish-orange hillsides, purplish-red grasses or red and orange trees with pink highlights can encourage you to play with color. Allow this new reality to inspire you. Think of the ways you flavor color when painting the natural world and apply that way of thinking to this complement painting. Analyze how it is that you vary colors. Do you consistently rely on a certain shade of blue to flavor a shadow? What version of orange color does it become now? Is there a way you might use that new orange color, rather than consistently using the same blue, in a future piece? What might happen if you begin to layer it over or put it down next to the favored blue? If it grays the blue too much for your taste, how might you shift it slightly one direction or the other on the color wheel to aid the blue, making it more lyrical and visually stimulating? Experiment with color this way. A series of paintings could be very instructive, freeing you to have fun with color in a way you might not have tried before.

Once you’ve completed your new complement painting, spend some time analyzing what happened. Ask yourself if this has challenged you more than you thought it would. Most of us have become dependent upon a palette of colors that we routinely use, which in itself is not a problem unless it’s become overly dull and boring. This experiment might suggest some new alternatives or additions. At this point you might have a painting that‘s worth keeping as it is. Often the new colors are intriguing and inspiring. If so, set it aside and try another using a different photograph. However, in painting the landscape you must keep in mind that you have a filter for the color blue that’s built into your brain. You know that the bluer and paler a color is, the farther away it is, but when you switch to the complementary colors you create an orange filter. Your brain is not able to process orange as a distant color, so landscapes often seem to lack a sense of air or space. This can be a dissatisfying effect. The solution might be to paint the colors of nature directly on top of your complement painting.(See Mesa Meadow, at the top, the finished painting with the natural colors added over the complementary layer.)

You might choose to spray a layer of workable fixative on your painting to give it more tooth, which will help hold another layer of pastel, but remember that fixative will slightly darken the colors. (If used, I suggest Spectrafix, which is non-toxic and alters colors less.) It’s not necessary to fix your work if the paper you’re using is adequate to the task, such as Wallis paper. After all, if you’re going to match the values using the colors of nature, you should be able to carefully lay them down directly atop the complement and arrive at a color that’s only slightly grayed or dulled. Finger blending is not recommended, as it tends to result in colors that are somewhat dreary and grayed. Now is the time to return to your original color photograph so that you can add the colors of reality. Remember, however, that the photograph is not a goal, but an aid to you. Use it to recall the colors you saw when you recorded the scene, then let this new color take the painting into places the photograph cannot go. As you put down the latest colors beside or on top of the original ones, notice how they optically jump, dazzling your eye. This is the power of complements. When a bit of red shines beneath the green, it adds some sparkle and pizzazz. Orange under blue gives some zing. Purple below yellow makes it snap a little. This is the essence of optically blended color. The artist must choose the degree to which this is successful and pleasing, but should not disregard the potential of such color use. Experiment with this idea, adding colors of the same or similar values to your paintings. Think about how using broken color might make your paintings stronger, so that instead of falling back on the color habits you have developed you become more adventurous. Take a chance with color and see where it takes you.

You might also choose to leave a portion of the complement painting untouched while covering a part with the natural colors. Divide your painting somewhere that logically leaves some of the underpainting showing so that you can see both lower and upper layers. Now make a painting the usual way, using the same photograph, without first layering the complementary colors. Notice the color choices you make and analyze whether the experiment has changed the way you think about and approach color.

Original photograph.

Painting color with value in mind is not a new idea. Most artists seem to intuitively come to understand value as they progress through their careers. However, using this series of exercises can help show you some new ideas about the use of color and challenge you to attempt new, visually exciting combinations. Put your experimental paintings alongside one another and compare results. Include the one that shows the complements below and the colors of nature directly on top, as well as paintings you did in the usual fashion before these experiments and subsequent to them. You may see that you’ve come to understand the values of the colors a bit more thoroughly, and you might also have found a way to utilize new colors of the same or similar values, but shifted toward the complements to enliven your color.

CHAPTER THIRTY -- TWENTY-STROKE PAINTINGS

2010-09-01T18:58:00.000-07:00

20-stroke sky

This experiment is designed to help you make fresh, lively paintings using a few well-chosen and carefully placed strokes. Where in the previous chapter, Limit Time and Palette, you moved fast, here you may actually slow down a little and take time to find the most effective and efficient strokes you can use. You’ll find simpler colors, use somewhat larger, gestural strokes, and overlap them to create an impression of detail, while limiting the number of strokes you use. The idea is to see how few strokes you can use to make a painting that effectively expresses a place.

thumbnail sketches

Begin with a few thumbnail sketches to sort out the major shapes. Keep these simple and fast, which will allow your brain to see shapes without regard to what the object is. Your eye and hand have the ability to see and record these things more accurately than you think, almost independently of your will. Do more than one thumbnail. Start with a credit card-sized box and do a quick drawing of what you actually see in your photograph. Then begin to move in closer, remove objects, rearrange them or add to the shapes to make an interesting composition. It’s simpler to stick to three values, dark, medium and light (which is usually the paper), although you might use medium-dark and medium-light values, too. As you refine the thumbnail, think about how you could make use of strokes to create the shapes.

only one stroke each

Let’s talk about what constitutes one stroke in pastel. Unlike an oil painter, your brush won’t run out of paint as you drag it across the paper. You can make some very lengthy and intricate strokes. Count each stroke from the moment you touch the paper to the point at which you lift your pastel stick. You might lay a stick flat on the paper and drag it over the entire area of the sky, using a back and forth motion to fill it in. If you have distant mountains, that same stroke might be lightly incorporated there as an under-color. A jagged stroke might simulate a line of trees or grasses across the entire span of the paper, while a continuous curlicue could create foliage or the undergrowth on a distant hillside. One stroke could serve several purposes as you vary the pressure on the stick. Use a big zigzag shape, or a huge swoop that curls and curves back and forth. It could go on for quite a while, so eke the best out of each stroke. You could conceivably paint half the piece in one well-conceived and executed stroke if working on a small sheet of paper. For our purposes, count using your finger to blend a passage or a Colour Shaper™ to brush pastel around like paint as one stroke.

I recommend preparing a smaller sheet of paper and doing a very simple line drawing to locate the major shapes. Think carefully about what needs to go down first. Paint what lies behind before painting what’s in front of it. Paint through objects, varying pressure where the sky passes behind trees or other items bisect space. Utilize some of the lovely habits of pastel, sometimes making a thick, impasto stroke to obscure what’s below, or a soft dry-brush stroke that allows color to glow from beneath. Think about how you can create color modifications using careful layers and different kinds of strokes.

Don’t try to make every nuance of color, highlight or shade. Distill the colors to essentials, modifying them where most useful to express the scene you’re painting. Choose the most vital shadows or highlights. Decide where smaller strokes will be necessary and most informative, and use them judiciously to draw the eye to the area of interest.

Painting in progress with hash marks to one side.

Keep a record of your strokes, limiting yourself to only 20. It’s probably simplest to make hash marks alongside your painting. You may find your paintings too rudimentary to start with, but in time you’ll find there’s a charming elegance to these simple little pieces. Paint a series of smaller images using 20 strokes. Later, if you desire, increase the stroke count to 30 or 40, and analyze how that changes your paintings.

Take the time to find strokes that work together to create the impression you seek. Go slowly, thinking through how you will structure the piece. In searching for the essential stroke you may find that you honestly don’t need to use more strokes. You only need to use better ones.

20 stroke Sandia

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE -- LIMIT TIME AND PALETTE

2010-08-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

9” x 12”, 30 minutes

I’ve been teaching for many years now and very few people have come to me to ask how they could become tighter painters. Far more often they ask what they can do to loosen up and be free, not constricted by tight realism and a slavish adherence to detail.

This exercise will help you relax and paint a little faster. It limits the amount of time you have to paint, making you move faster and without inhibition, as well as limits the palette of colors, which forces you to be creative.

Start with a smaller piece of paper. This small size seems to allow you to let go a bit more easily since you aren’t filling up a huge piece of paper. A smaller paper also allows you to move more quickly without getting bogged down. I usually suggest a 9x12” or smaller size.

If you’re working on Wallis or another sanded paper that has no color, toning is a good idea. It makes the first marks on the paper, which frees you of “white canvas syndrome” and gives an overall color to the paper that you can use with a limited palette. You may choose one of the colored papers such as Art Spectrum, La Carte or Pastelmat.

Any subject matter will do for this exercise, but clouds and skies are particularly suited to it. The idea is to paint fast and furious without a lot of detail, which works nicely in the sky. The palette of colors found there is already somewhat limited, and clouds lend themselves to looseness.

Prepare ahead. Tape your paper to the board, clip your photograph on the board where you can see it and take out a white paper towel for your palette of pastels. As in the last chapter, devoted to limiting your palette, carefully choose only 10 colors. Use dark, medium-dark, medium, medium-light and light colors, based on the photograph. Lay out the colors you’ve selected on a paper towel and put away your palette.

Find a timer, preferably one that has a loud alarm that will stop you in your tracks, and set it for 20 minutes. Begin with an extremely fast sketch that only locates the horizon line and the major elements of the composition. There’s no time for details.

Work all over the painting with the colors so that you structure things altogether at one time, relating all the elements to one another. Don’t start with any detail. If you begin to put in too many details you’ll slow down too much. You must keep moving. If you don’t have the right color, layer the ones you do to achieve the right value instead. Make use of the different colors and values on hand to make new ones, layering and blending them.

Keep the timer where you can see it so that you’re aware of how long you have left to paint. This is a sprint, so go all out. Abandon yourself to the color and mood, dashing in streaks and smoothing down swaths of colors all over.

When the timer sounds, lay down your pastels. Now step back and analyze what’s happening. Look for the accidental things that thrill you and for those things that are working. Ask yourself if you missed one or two colors, perhaps colors you didn’t choose or missing values.

Choose only one to two more colors and add them to your limited palette. Set the timer for an additional 10 minutes and get going. Again, move fast, not letting up for details. Work right up until the timer sounds, then lay down your pastels.

If you’re like most of us, you’ll find things you like about this fast little painting, and some things that displease you. Sometimes it takes a little practice to loosen up and accomplish much in just a half hour, so practice! Set a goal for yourself, perhaps to paint 10 of these little ones in a week. This will give you the motivation to keep working.

When you have a small body of these paintings lay them out together and analyze what’s working and what isn’t. There’s a lot to be learned from this.

• Stop criticizing what doesn’t work because you were moving fast, and instead look for trends, for those things that happen repeatedly that please you.

• Put them in order of your own personal preference and ask yourself why you chose this order.

• Find the things in each one that works and ask why. Use corners to crop down to the area that is spontaneously successful and think about what happened there that is good. Did you use a certain kind of stroke, a particular set of color layers, or another element that works? Be specific.

• Evaluate the things that happened that pleasantly surprise you with their clarity, despite the messy, spontaneous strokes.

Then go paint some more.

6" x 9", 20 minutes

6” x 9”, 20 minutes

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT -- LIMIT YOUR PALETTE

2010-08-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

To learn how to control color and use it creatively, try an experiment that limits the number of colors you use. Find a photo -- really any subject matter will work -- but make sure it’s something that you find intriguingly colorful. (This may not be a brightly colored photo, just color you like.)

You’ll begin with only 10 colors, so choose them carefully. Use dark, medium-dark, medium, medium-light and light colors, based on the photograph. If it is a high-key photo with lots of light colors your darkest dark may be a medium. If it’s a moody, dark photo, you may choose far more dark colors and only one or two medium-light ones. Lay out the colors you’ve selected on a paper towel and put away your palette. It’s much easier to do this exercise if you can’t see what’s missing.

Work all over the painting with the colors so that you structure things altogether at one time, relating all the elements to one another. Don’t start with details. If you don’t have the right color, layer the ones you do have to achieve the right value instead. Make use of the different colors and values on hand to make new ones, layering or scumbling with a slightly harder stick over softer pastels. Notice how the color effects differ when you layer them in a different order. Pay attention to the way some colors look dark in light areas and light in dark areas. These ‘bridge’ colors are very useful!

After you have painted for a while, you’re likely to find yourself missing one or two key colors. This is not the time to add 10 new colors -- only one or two. You may need a particular color that’s missing. You may need a darker dark or a lighter light. Whatever you really need you can add. Cover your palette after choosing them so you aren’t tempted to grab more. Then work to your conclusion using only those colors.

I suggest you make a separate chart of the colors you chose. You’ll find it comes in handy later to remind you how you made those colors, so it might be a good idea to stick it to the back of the painting.

• Evaluate this painting a bit differently than you would your other work.

• Look for the things that happened that pleasantly surprise you with their clarity, despite the spontaneity.

• Where are the accidents that please you, and what did you do to create them? Which colors did you layer together?

• Did you blend them?

• Why do you think that grassy foreground look good or the tree-covered hillside work?

• What is it about the lavender you were forced to layer into the sky that is so pleasing?

• What color combinations did you find surprisingly successful?

When you have developed a small body of these paintings, lay them out together and analyze what’s working and what isn’t. There’s a lot to be learned from this. Put up a little show for yourself in the studio and analyze them. Look for trends, for those things that happen repeatedly that please you. Put them in order of your own personal preference and ask yourself why you chose this order. Find the specific things in each one that works and ask why.

You can see that I chose three colors as the most significant ones, the medium blue-violet, orange and rose. In addition to those main colors I chose a deep lavender, dark green, a medium yellow-green, a light cerulean blue, peach, light yellow-ochre and two peaches, one pale and one medium. The colors in wall behind the pot with the dappled the sun and shadow please me.

I found three key colors here, as well, a light yellow-orange, medium magenta and cobalt blue. The bright orange and intense yellow-orange layered over the light and medium-light blue sky work well. I added a dark red-violet and blue-violet, as well as touches of deep turquoise and dark blue to finish the palette.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN -- COLORED GROUNDS

2010-08-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

Cedars on orange, 6" x 12"

In this experiment you’ll work on different colored grounds using the same photograph for each painting to see how the ground color affects the finished image. You’ll observe more clearly how much influence the ground can have on a painting once you try this.

Choose a simple photo that has good contrast and interesting colors. Cut your paper to the same size so that you aren’t trying to recompose the painting each time.

White paper is easy to find, as is a medium tone. However, you might want to try toning your own paper, which allows you to experiment with a variety of colored grounds. My method is simple. You can see just how I do it in CHAPTER THREE -- GETTING STARTED.

You might try some of the Pastelmat colors for this experiment.

For more about Pastelmat visit www.pastelmat.com/

Complete each painting separately, not side by side. Let each one come of your response to the ground. It’s not necessary to retain the same palette of colors for all three paintings. (If you do use the exact same palette, use a light touch that allows the ground color to be seen beneath the colors.) I prefer to allow each paper color to inspire me to use differing palettes. I usually find that light colors move me to use brighter colors, while darks result in richer colors that are deeper in tone. Very bright grounds make for a saturated colors – and sometimes a heavy hand as I desperately try to cover all that offending color.

Think of these as three paintings, not one painting done on three grounds. Let the color motivate you from the beginning, and try to analyze your responses to those first color choices. My observations on how I usually respond are below. Yours might be different.

White or very pale ground: Usually a white ground allows darker colors to harmonize quickly and intensifies pure colors. The light of the paper seems to glow through every color. Because it’s light, however, you need to nail your darks in place early. Take notice whether this light color inspires you to play with bright colors more, or if the lack of color bothers you.

Cedars on white, 6" x 12"

Medium ground: A “safe” alternative, the medium ground seems to allow all colors to work together without too much influence. As you paint on this ground, analyze how you feel and whether you’re relying on the ”usual” colors in your palette. Are you free to grab any kind of color? Or does it constrain you to certain choices?

Black or very dark ground: Dark grounds instantly harmonize lighter colors, which is often the majority of a pastelist's palette. Depending on how dark or black the color the ground, you might notice that all of your light and medium-light colors look similar in value until you have covered most of the surface. You therefore need to pay attention to the medium values in this painting. Notice whether this ground color influences your color choices. Are you inclined to pick up more muted tones? Does the somber tone make you feel differently about the colors? Or do you prefer stronger contrasts as a result?

Cedars on black, 6" x 12"

Bright ground: If you choose a particularly vivid color to paint on, you may find that your initial colors seem dark and dull, which may make you tend to grab more vivid, bright colors. The ground color influences every color, so depending on whether you’re using a complement or an analogous color you may feel very differently about each one -- at least until you cover more of the ground. Sometimes I find I’m just dying to blot out that color and work hard to cover it all, resulting in a thick layer of pastels that effectively ignores the ground color. Make certain you think the color is suited to the subject you’re painting, perhaps a complement to the majority of the ground color. Notice how this choice influences your process.

Once you’ve completed all the paintings put them up and study them together. Don’t lightly go over this step; really study the images and decide what worked.

• Analyze what worked and why.
• What colors made for a more successful painting and why?
• Do you feel better about working on a light, medium or dark tone?
• How about vivid colors?
• What other ground color experiments do you think would be helpful?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX -- IMAGINE A PAINTING

2010-08-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

Imagine a River, 12" x 18"

Do you remember sitting before a blank piece of paper when you were a child, imagining what to put there? It was so easy to paint. Everything you put down meant something to you and it didn’t matter whether anyone else understood. Times have changed and now the strokes you put on the paper need to communicate clearly, but there are still some wonderful things you can derive from your imagination. You may be surprised to find out how much you already know.

Mount a piece of untouched pastel paper, place it on your easel and simply look at it. Don’t think of it as a potential painting but as a window. If I ask you to imagine something through your window, the chances are you’ll think, “I don’t know what to paint!” So start by bringing to mind the subjects you’ve already painted successfully. Do you like to paint mountains and skies? Maybe you paint dogs, or figures, or the ocean or flowers. Whatever it is you know and feel comfortable painting is fine. Find an interesting composition using a subject you know well. Recall a clear picture of your most successful or most recent painting to inspire you.

Spend some time imagining your painting in different formats. Most of us think of the horizontal landscape or vertical portrait formats, but how about a painting that’s quite wide and short, or tall and thin? Perhaps this painting could be relatively small, or you may use the whole page. Format and scale play a large part in the success of a painting. Mask off the format you’ve chosen, changing the shape of your window.

Before starting to paint, think about the value structure of your painting. Far more important than color is the arrangement of tones, which you should plot out in your mind. Whatever subject you plan to paint, think about how dark or light the colors will be and locate key elements. Where do the darkest and lightest areas come closest together? Where will you place a calming neutral? Is there an interesting massing of dark, medium and light colors, as well as smaller and larger shapes? Imagine all kinds of shapes and values together.

Now think about the palette of colors you want to use. When painting a familiar subject you’ll have a suggested color scheme -- sunflowers are yellow and black, for instance. Certain color choices appeal to us, so we frequently repeat the same palette. This may not be the time to try something new but to rely on what you’ve found pleasing and successful. However, you don’t necessarily need to think of this painting as a slavish rendition of reality. You may want to make your sunflowers orange and purple, or gold and blue. The point is to summon up colors that please you, whether true to the actual subject or a departure from reality. Plan the color scheme for all the local areas in your painting, not just the subject. Decide what color the background and foreground will be, filling in the blanks in your mind like puzzle pieces. Consider how the color of the paper might factor in the finished painting. Painting on a bright color or a very dark one will change the overall look. If you plan to tone the paper, take that color choice into consideration as well.

At this point you might feel ready to begin painting, but take one more step before putting pastel to paper. Identify the movement you use in your paintings most often. Movement is the energy of a painting, the motivating factor in shifting the viewer’s eye from place to place. We tend to repeat movements that please us. Think about the successful paintings you’ve completed already and determine whether you can find connecting threads of movement. For instance, you may be inclined to use a centered and circular motif in your still life compositions. Perhaps you use strong zigzagging diagonals in your figures, or calm horizontal movement in your landscapes. Knowing your habits will allow you to either use this inclination to its best advantage or go against the flow in your imagined painting. Plan the movement in your imagined painting by visualizing where the eye will start and the direction it will travel around the subject.

Try to visualize the painting fully, seeing it in your mind’s eye before starting. Be sure to use this mental picture only as the starting point -- an aid to help you reach a goal that’s not set in stone. Do a few thumbnail sketches to help you pinpoint the location of key elements, map the values you plan to use and find the movement that interests you. Limit these sketches to less than a minute to begin with, gradually lengthening the time until you have a small, satisfying composition.

The painting should begin to flow as a result of your visualization and planning, slowly taking shape as you paint. Be responsive to what begins to happen, allowing those pleasing incidental marks that occur to lead you. Occasionally close your eyes to envision your goal, and then refer back to your thumbnail sketch so that you don’t lose sight of that goal. Be flexible, but don’t allow the painting to overwhelm you. The excitement and energy of painting can sometimes become so absorbing that you’ll find yourself heading too far from the envisioned outcome, which can often result in a mess of colorful, fun marks that don’t communicate anything. As a child you could get away with spontaneity in place of communication, but now you must be in control, disciplining your mark-making and choosing successful, though lose and painterly strokes, that tell the story. Don’t let the joy of painting fool you into losing touch with what you’re trying to say.

Take frequent breaks to step back from your painting and look at it, remembering the vision you imagined so that you can compare the results. You may need to punch up the contrast, or change the size or scale of an element. Perhaps some accidental stroke or color combination will inspire you to change things. Whatever you see is legitimate since there’s no photograph or other record confining you. The goal, aside from a few thumbnail sketches, is all in your mind. Try several of these paintings, allowing yourself to come to trust that you are able to paint without a net, utilizing the spontaneity of a child and the discipline of an artist.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE– VALUE/COLOR CHART

2010-07-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

Hacienda, 12" x 9"

In this experiment you’ll select a photograph to paint and make a chart of the values and colors to use for a painting. Find a photograph with good contrasting darks and lights and an excellent range of medium values, which make this experiment easier to do. Later you can go on to try it with moodier photos that contain less contrast. It can actually be a very good tool to use to help you decide on color variations in any value area.

Begin with a clear print of the photo in color, not grayscale, since this experiment will help you learn to determine the value of a color, as well has help you find other colors of the same or similar values to use in the course of the painting.

On a piece of clean white paper mark off a grid of approximately 2” squares, five across and five down. You can use any paper, but my experiment is done on a piece of white Wallis Pro grade paper. I find that making a chart on the paper I plan to use for the painting is most instructive.

Use a value finder, which you can hold over the colors to find the values. It’s easier to determine the darkest and lightest values, which is why you’ll do them first. Medium values are most challenging to sort out.

• Squint at the photograph and locate the darkest value in your photograph. Fill the bottom left square with a dark gray that matches that value.

• Find the lightest value and fill the top left square with a gray in that value.

• Decide on the next lightest value, which is medium-light, and add a gray in that value in the second square.

• Determine the next darkest value, which will be medium-dark of course, and fill a gray in the fourth square matching it.

• Find the medium value and fill the center left square with it.

**Hint: It might be useful to turn your board different directions as you fill in your squares to minimize the smear factor and the way dust drops down the page.

Check the values in your photograph carefully and make sure they’re found in the photo. Don’t use too black a dark if that value doesn’t exist there, or too white a light if it’s not that light. Remember that white has no matching color, since nothing is really as light as white.

Next to the value column record the color you see in the photograph. For instance, if a dark green tree is your darkest value and color, make a square of that dark green beside your darkest value square. If the sky is the lightest light, as it often is, place that pale blue in the second column next to the lightest value. You should then have a row of colors corresponding to each value that is derived from the real, natural colors seen in the photo.

This is the chart of colors I chose to use for the painting.
Can you picture all of them used simultaneously in the proper areas?

But to expand on your color choices, now add three more colors that match both of your first two selections in value. These need not be colors found in the photograph. Just match the values as a means of seeing that you could use them in the same place. For instance, beside your dark green you might put a very dark purple, a dark blue, and dark rust. Beside the light blue use pink, lavender or yellow. Repeat this for each row, choosing three other colors, so that you end up with a chart of colors matching each value. You should have a grayscale row, a row of real colors, and three rows of colors matching in value.

It’s advisable to set aside the pastel sticks you choose in order to make the painting with them.

Underdrawing

Now you have a chart that you can use for your painting. My challenge to you is to use all of the colors in the chart to make a painting. See how you can use combinations of pale yellow, green, pink and lavender to paint the sky, or all the variations of brown, red-violet, burnt umber, and blue-green to make the medium-dark areas, and so forth. It isn’t necessary to make the colors highly saturated or bright, as I often do. You can just as successfully paint a tonal piece with subtle color that is strong and lyrical in color.

I suggest you begin with a good underdrawing in charcoal on you toned Wallis paper. Record the values so that you become familiar with them and can match the colors in your chart to the value areas properly, but in painterly fashion.

To find out whether the colors were close in value I made swatches, touching the colors to make a mass and squinting to see if the values were similar or not. You can see some colors that didn’t make the cut.

First layer of color

Here are the colors used in the first layer. The ones along the
bottom are extras, beyond the original palette of colors I chose.

One thing I should make clear is that you don’t need to stick to the original palette. Those colors are meant to inspire you to use adventurous color combinations. I often launch the painting using that palette, as I have here in the first layer, and then go on to add other significant colors where needed. Be careful not to destroy beautiful color layers by adding a flat layer of one color over the top, however.

Take your time and enjoy exploratory color. Leave evidence of layers. Let broken color shine independently, creating a visual mélange. You may choose strong, bold combinations or paint lyrical tonal variations, but no matter what you do, take some color risks to see where they will lead you.

A close-up of the colors used. Notice the layers in the building
and the more broken color in the tree.

Many colors make up the tree, which invited
broken strokes laid down side-by-side.

The grasses are massed together but show evidence of
layers of multiple colors.

TEST YOURSELF:

As a review, remember that you can determine the value of a color by laying swatches down so the colors are touching one another. For example, to find a value matching the gray stripe across the bottom, I’ve put several colors along it, just kissing the stripe.

I prefer to look at the pastels with my eyes to determine the values of the colors, rather than changing a photograph into a grayscale version (as I have done for you below for illustration purposes.) I find that there are too many variations on how to achieve the final grayscale version, not to mention the fact that determining the value of a color needs to be done visually, not mechanically, as you stand at the easel. It’s important to develop your ability to see the relative value of a color in its environment, whether that’s in nature, in your palette or amid your painting strokes.

Before looking at the grayscale sample below, decide for yourself which of these you think is the same or a very similar value. Squint to see if they become one with the stripe or not. (As much as I don't believe grayscaling the colors is particularly helpful when painting, I do believe you can learn about the application of value to color this way, so I've included a grayscale print.)

You can see that the second color, the rust, is a little dark, and the fourth color, the greenish-yellow, is a hair darker, (if this grayscale is to be believed,) but both the magenta and orange closely equate to the value of the gray. Don’t be fooled by complementary colors or saturation when seeking values. Squint harder.

I believe you would be successful in combining all five of these colors in an area that’s medium in value, except possibly the rust, although I might be inclined to use it in an earlier stage to flavor the colors and subsequently cover it with the truer values.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR -- MAKE A PUZZLE PAINTING

2010-07-21T14:49:00.000-07:00

Waterfall, 18" x 12"

This experiment is meant to help you identify the value of a color and use multiple colors in any given value area.

First find a photograph that contains good contrast and a range of values that you would like to use for a painting. Make two black and white copies of it, enlarging them to about 8"x10”. If you’re able, blur one of the grayscale photos. If not, it won’t make any difference. Just be sure you have one clear grayscale print, and a second one that is either blurred or not. Blurring it sometimes simplifies the choice of value areas.

Cut the grayscale print into pieces. Use three, four or more value groupings. In other words, cut out the light sky shape, the medium-light shadowed cloud shapes, the dark tree shape (massed together), the medium mountain and the medium-dark ground plane. If there are smaller groupings within a value area, such as in the clouds, average this out by squinting at the picture or by placing it across the room to look at it. Find the average of the area. For instance, where there’s a tree against the sky, do not try to cut out every little light spot. Simply choose the dark value of the tree where it is dark and the light area of the sky as big shapes. Make as many value pieces as you need so that you have at least three or four puzzle pieces. You may have more than one puzzle piece in any value grouping -- for instance, you might have two medium-dark value pieces, one on each side of a road.

As you cut out the pieces reassemble them over the grayscale copy so that you can see where they belong. Lightly number each piece with a line pointing to that area in the grayscale photo, and then number the back of the cutout pieces to match. All this is meant to do is to help you reassemble the parts into a whole again.

Now remove the grayscale photo and arrange each of the cutouts into value order from light to dark. If you find pieces that are exactly or extremely near to the same value, group them together.

Take each value (or grouping of values) and prepare a clean, preferably white piece of drawing paper that will become the chart of colors you might use. Number them from one to five or six, depending on how many values you use.

Lay the hole in a value finder over the value shape cutout to find its value number from 2 to 9. Note the number of that value on your clean paper. * Note: There is no standard for numbering grayscales. Some will number white as 1 and some will number black as 1. Use whatever your value finder says and disregard others.

In good strong light on a separate piece of drawing paper find pastels that match this value. Lay down a swatch of the color and hold the value finder above it, then squint to see if it matches. Once you have found the matching value, note that color on the chart.

Have fun! Any color is okay. Try colors that often go unused. Think value, choose color. This is no longer a sky -- it‘s a light value. It’s not trees, but a chunk of dark colors. That’s no longer the ground but a harmony of medium colors. If you need to, turn the value shape cutout another direction so that it loses its identity as an object, such as trees, and can only be identified as a value.

You’ll know the values are exactly or almost exactly the same if, while squinting, they seem to blend into one larger shape. Look at the illustration above and notice how when you squint the blue centered in the hole and the gray surrounding it seem to merge into one. (If you can't see it, squint more.) Then mark the colors with the edges touching and you will quickly see if they are the same or very nearly the same value. As you can see in the mass of colors touching here, when you squint they become one larger shape, indicating their similarity in value.

It might be a good idea to lay aside the colors you have chosen from your palette so that you can easily find them again. You will be returning to these exact colors for your finished painting. It's helpful to make a chart for each value listing the value number and the colors, and lay out the pastel sticks on it. Do this for each of the value groupings in your painting. You should have three to six value charts. showing the color possibilities you might use in a painting of this image.

Now, looking at the original, whole grayscale photo, compare it with the charts you’ve made. Notice that you’ve selected many different colors of the correct value for each value grouping. Using only the grayscale photograph and your imagination (no pastel for now), envision a version of the image using different and varied colors. Imagine some different color possibilities for your painting. Take your time and think. This is valuable time and necessary to do.

Then using the grayscale photograph make three different sketches, loosely trying out different color layers to see just how the values work. Layer colors over one another or use broken color, putting them side by side in your painting. You don’t need to use every color in every painting, but remember that as you layer colors they will appear to be different depending on the last color applied. Perhaps it would help you to work in a format similar in size to the black and white copy. Paint quickly so that your brain doesn’t have time to demand “real” colors. Be playful, have fun, don’t let the finished product blackmail you into becoming colorless or vague. This is a color experiment! Find what is expressive and beautiful.

When you have completed your color sketches, select one to use as a basis for a larger, more finished painting using beautiful and expressive color.

(I apologize for not having any painting samples to show you from the above color choices, however here are some colorful paintings done using this method.)

Final Touches, 12" x 9"

Shadow Colors, 9" x 12"

Green at Pink Time, 9" x 17"

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE -- FREE YOURSELF FROM THE PHOTO

2010-07-13T20:54:00.000-07:00

Spring Canyon, 12" x 18"

Using a photograph as a source of inspiration can be a helpful tool, but as an artist you need to develop the strength to make decisions based on your creativity and ideas, and not become overly dependent on photos. Becoming a better artist is a lot like building muscle. You must make time to work out and improve, and try different exercises to become stronger. Training makes you fit, gives you confidence and allows you to try new and more difficult activities, which can result in new vision and creativity. Your artistic muscle improves when you exercise it independently.

A photograph can assist you in planning a painting. It can be a wellspring of information that helps you recall the place, time and object you’re painting accurately and helps you capture temporal elements not easily recalled. However, the same photograph can come to dominate a painting, slowly and subtly becoming the goal, sapping you of creative strength. Too often a photograph enslaves the unsuspecting painter to some degree of realism, detail or composition, and steals creative aspects. The artist can feel compelled to make the painting almost identical to the photo.

The eye sees differently than the camera. This difference shows in a painting done exclusively using the photo. When you stand in a location and look at a scene you tend to overlook the little things that lie close to you that a photograph will often include. The photo creates an “arm’s length” look to a place set off in the distance, like a postcard held in your hand. Another aspect derived from using different lenses is the tendency to have the same amount of detail from your feet to infinity or the horizon -- something only a photo can do -- or to have such a short focal length that everything in front of and behind the subject is a dreamy blur. Surely you’ve seen pieces painted using a photograph and clearly recognized that fact.
Many artists aren’t willing to abandon the use of photographs entirely, wanting to make credible paintings that include some aspects found in photos. So, how can you free yourself of over-dependence on the photograph? At what point does it cease to give strength and become a source of weakness? This point is different for each artist, but if you find the photo has begun to sap your power you might want to try a few exercises to help you limit its use as a resource.

Newly gained freedom from photos can often be disturbing, even a bit frightening. It seems safer to have a good photo that you can go back to over and over. However, the idea is to free yourself of this dependence and find the creative aspects of painting that will make you a stronger artist. You need to develop those artistic muscles. Begin by resolving to put the photograph away after completing a certain portion of the painting. Decide exactly how far you wish to go before setting it aside. You might choose to do a sketch, the underdrawing or one layer of color using the photo as reference.

You must put the photograph in a place where you can no longer see it if you’re to become free of its undue influence. When you reach the point of too much dependence, resolve to put the photograph completely out of sight. This means it’s not lying on your worktable a foot or so away where you can easily glance over at it. If that’s the case, eventually you’ll pick it up to see some aspect more closely and find yourself captured by it once again. Put it in a drawer or in another room, a place where you have to make a concerted effort to get it again.

Spend some time thinking about how far you really need to go with your reference photo in hand before going without. At what point in the process of your painting are you comfortable putting the photo away? (If you just said, "When it’s finished," you need these exercises!)

EXERCISES

One way to begin is to decide to use photos only for sketches. You can draw every detail and catch every nuance of the photograph as long as you know it’s only the beginning. Many artists find this system helpful because it works out the desire to draw what they see. After completing the initial sketch, you can begin to recompose elements, rearranging things to improve the composition in subsequent sketches. Once you arrive at a pleasing arrangement of shape, line and value, put the photograph in its hiding place and proceed with the painting, relying on your intuition and creativity to complete it. This usually results in a more original work that contains some of the virtues of the photograph.

Another possibility is to use the photo for the underdrawing only. This means that you might make decisions about composition, value and detail on your paper but not make any commitments to them without changing things. You can use the photo for certain aspects, then recompose before you begin putting down color. Rearrange the elements -- lower the horizon line, position an object lower or higher, or to the left or right, lighten or darken an area, mass things together differently. Whatever needs doing, do it now. Think of the drawing as your own, not a recreation of the photograph. Take possession of the place or object you’re painting. In some ways, you might find this a more independent way to compose, unlike making sketches and transferring the image to the paper. This method encourages you to loosen up in your approach to the whole painting process. Once you’ve determined what elements you want to use and where they reside, including details in certain areas, be sure that you put the photograph away. Try to think of the new image as being liberated from the photograph, an original place or item that’s solely yours.

Sometimes you’ll use one of the two methods above, and then as you begin to paint you’ll have a need to refer to the photograph again. You may need to retrieve a certain area of detail, perhaps the rocky face of a cliff at your focal point or the sheen of the water’s edge. In that case, try beginning with the photo, putting it away to recompose the drawing, and then retrieving it for the details before putting it out of sight again. This yo-yo effect works to begin to free you of the photo by assuring you when you’ve rearranged and established a clear composition and found the area of interest. You’re still able to retrieve the detail in areas where you need them. It may reassure you to know that you can freely compose and go back to your reference material later. Don’t fall into the habit of using the photo too often. If you’re tempted to pick up the picture and return to it as the final authority, this method may not be the best for you.

Another idea is to use the photo for the underdrawing, deciding on the light and dark masses of the painting, at which point you can choose colors based on the black and white values that are in place. Match the value of a color for the value in the drawing, disregarding the photographic color. This is a good idea if you’re fairly capable of understanding value and color and are not afraid of working without the aid of the photo. You’ll become free of overly photographic color and can begin with a lovely layer of playful color. If your goal is realism, you can achieve more realistic color in your subsequent layers, allowing the creative use of color to enhance realism’s lyrical quality.

Another possibility is to do the underdrawing and one layer of color, then put the photo away. This way you have the natural color in place, but are free of the photograph to add layers of creative, personal color. This will work if you’re able to think value when a color is in place, but will be difficult if you’re overly dependent on photographic color. For instance, once the green of the foliage is in place, you may find it difficult to put orange or purple over it. However, if you feel confident of color and are more comfortable with the colors of nature in place, begin with the green and let orange or purple work their magic. You still must free yourself of the photograph, allowing natural color to bow to your creativity.

If the photograph is so precious and beautiful that you cannot bear to depart from it, consider having it enlarged and framed, and don’t try to make a painting using it! Good photographs are seductive, urging you to copy every aspect. Instead, find a photograph that has some interesting elements, but one that you wouldn’t paint as it is. This will force you to recompose or recolor your painting. Bad photographs can make good paintings in the hands of an increasingly strong and original artist and can encourage creative risks that will likely improve your work. When you’re not enamored of the photo you might be inspired to make the painting look even better.

Is there ever a time when you should rely on the photograph throughout the entire course of a painting? Each artist must answer that question herself. However, think creatively and use different methods to see what will help you become stronger. As you become more confident of your ability to paint, rid yourself of dependence on the photograph. The ultimate independence comes when you no longer rely on the photo as a reference at all, instead reaching into your memory and experience to paint. Most artists have built more muscle than they realize and the act of painting solely by recall can reveal hidden strengths. Try painting your next piece without using any reference photo at all. Think about the place or objects you wish to paint, making a mental composition. Relax and let your mind and hand find the composition on your paper. You may be surprised in your ability to paint without any help from outside resources.

Building muscle is challenging but it results in new self-confidence. Knowing how much to rely on the photograph and when to let go can make more powerful paintings.

Soft Morning, 9" x 12"

Making a drawing, as I did above, can satisfy the desire to capture the details but free you to paint an image different from the photograph.

Sunstruck City

The resource photograph, shown above, is quite ordinary and uninspiring, except that it reminded me of the light that day. I used it to establish the mesas and shadows, then cut loose and recalled the color creatively.

Twilight Crossroads

Likewise a dull and fairly pedestrian photograph inspired me with a memory of shapes and light, but the color is all my own.

The paintings below were done entirely from my imagination, using no reference photograph at all.

Glow, 12" x18"

Boundary of the Day, 18" x 12"

Hillside series paintings.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO -- WHITE DONE RIGHT

2010-07-07T13:53:00.000-07:00

Frosty Glow, 9" x 12"

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal where this was originally published, with additional material included here.)

The painting looks washed out, as though someone poured bleach over it and left it in the sun too long. All the colors appear faded, like jeans after years of wear or an old flag left to disintegrate, a vague suggestion of once-bright colors. The overall effect is dull and flat. Chalkiness is a problem that can crop up in any medium, but is often found in pastel paintings, partly because of the abundance of pale colors that are available. The whitish, wishy-washy colors of a chalky painting suggest a lack of control over value, contrast and color.

A high-key painting need not be bland and characterless. Instead it can celebrate the light by maintaining control of tones, using a range of values and the right contrasts for the subject. Although the darkest dark may only be a medium value in the final painting it must nevertheless present a selection of values leading to the lightest light.

One way to defeat chalky color syndrome is to try two different challenges: First, paint an all-white subject using no actual white pastel. Second, paint a very high-key subject in which a medium value functions as the darkest dark. Each of these exercises will strengthen your understanding of how to control values while using colors. Value is the element that describes the shapes of objects and is the underlying abstraction of all painting, so increased awareness of value improves composition as well as color.

WHITE WITHOUT WHITE

Begin with an all-white subject, which may reside inside the composition, such as a white cloud or whitewater rapids, and work to create interesting colors hung on a sound tonal structure while maintaining a sense of whiteness. Because of the temptation to pick up pure, bright white, remove it from your palette and put it where you cannot see it. Good planning must lie behind your painting, in which you first create an arrangement of interesting values and shapes. In this challenge you need not limit the values. In fact, it’s best to design a strong tonal contrast of dark darks and an excellent range of middle values to use against the light colors to achieve the impression of whiteness. Don’t use bright white paper, which will simply allow you to replace the missing white with the color of the ground. Instead, choose a light value tone in a pleasing color to set the mood of the painting and establish its overall paleness. Do not allow the white subject to become simply black and white. Utilize colors to arrive at the proper tones. Many times an over-reliance on high contrast alone results in a chalky painting. Instead, a range of strong middle values accomplished via color will make an interesting all-white subject.

Cold River Runoff, 9" x 17"

How much color can you put into white? One of the most interesting aspects of white is that it’s made up of all colors in the light spectrum. Overlapping red, blue and green spotlights can make white light on a stage, as long as the colors are equally balanced. For the artist, this means white may be flavored with any color found in nature. Consider the color cast that varying light sources give to objects. Our sun is a yellow star and gives warmth to all colors seen in daylight. In shade, the blue of the sky influences all colors, so whites seen in daylight can generally be thought of as warm yellow in the sun and cool blue in shade. However, there are varying kinds of daylight. On an overcast day the light is often cool in color, having been filtered through clouds, while at sunrise or sunset the light is strikingly warm in color. Whites seen under these conditions can be darker shades of blue and green or warm, bright tones of red and orange. Moonlight, because it is so pale, bleeds all color from a scene, leaving ghostly grays in place of whites. Firelight and candlelight make white into hot red and orange. You’re free to select from an endless array of light colors because of the fact that white contains all colors.

One particularly important tool to have on hand is a value finder. While there are many varieties, essentially this is a card printed with a scale of grays from black to white, each of which is pierced with an opening. This allows you to hold the card above a color, squint until your eye is almost closed and see where that particular color blends into its value of gray. For instance, you can hold the card above a photograph of clouds and perceive the lightest lights in the white of the billows, as well as the paler grays of the blue of the sky. There is no standard number assigned to values on the value finder. The number 10 does not always represent white. In fact, 10 might easily be called black, so disregard the actual number but understand that there is a scale of dark to light.

White is by definition the lightest value in the palette. To paint white subject matter you must first realize that no other color can possibly approach white in lightness. Therefore the challenge is to build near-whites into the painting, using far more colors in the light range of your palette. Hold the value finder above the lightest values in your photograph or painting, noting that only white registers as the lightest light. Now find colors that are slightly -- very slightly -- darker than white. This may be only a pale pearl gray value. If your palette of colors is not strong in this light range, consider purchasing very pale blues, greens, yellows, peaches, pinks, lavenders and grays that you can use when very light values are needed. However, do not rely on light colors alone to make an effective painting of a white subject. You must structure a strong range of all values into the painting, and these too must be made using colors. Particularly important to the success of the white subject is the use of interesting middle tones, where the strongest color often resides. The strongest darks will also benefit from the use of colors.

To check the values of your colors change a photograph to grayscale on your computer. This will allow you to clearly see how the colors translate into values. Check to make sure that your subject appears to be white in the grayscale version and that you have the proper array of values.

MIDDLE VALUE AS DARK

For another challenge, paint a subject that’s structured using mostly lighter values, such as a very sunny landscape. This is commonly referred to as a high-key painting. Use your value finder to establish the darkest dark in your painting as a medium or medium-dark value. High-key compositions must have an interesting variety of values between the lightest light and the darkest dark to avoid overly pale chalkiness, even if the darkest color is medium in value. Rather than relying on high contrasts of light and dark, look instead to color relationships. This will necessitate concentrated contrasts in color rather than a reliance on value alone. However, no painting can possibly divorce itself entirely from the issue of value, which is a basic property of color.

Fog, 12" x 9"

You’ll need to select a value for your ground. Beginning with a middle value establishes the darkest tone for the entire painting. The test is to rely on medium values as the darkest darks in a painting of a light subject. It helps to create a careful study or underdrawing to establish a range of values from medium to light. In this painting you are allowed to use white for the palest value, however, after your experiments painting all-white-with-no-white you most likely will find that white seems somewhat dead, giving a ghostly chalkiness to the piece. The idea here is to use vibrant colors that bounce and play together, achieving an overall high-key value structure that’s nonetheless colorful. The effect may be one of intense heat, giving the impression of a hot summer day or powerful sunlight warming everything in the scene, even when predominantly cool colors are used, or may result in the cool, pale effect of fog or early morning light. Confirm your limited value range by laying your value finder down alongside the painting, or put a strong dark line next to the image against which you can check your colors so that you can more easily identify darks that are becoming too deep for the limited range you’ve established. Step back frequently to see that the intensity of colors you’re using approximates the light on the subject.

CONTROL

As you conduct each of these exercises your control over value will increase, as will your understanding of how to use colorful lights. You will begin to see the color of light in all its many hues, and realize that pale color does not mean lack of color. Chalky paintings with an insipid, dull look will soon give way to lyrical colors in pale values that vibrate together in a well-planned structure of values.

Sanctuary, 12" x 9"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE -- THE GREEN PROBLEM

2010-06-30T12:48:00.000-07:00

Light From Above, 18" x 12"

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal where this was originally published as "It's Not Easy Being Green" )

Red is intense, yellow is cheerful, blue is peaceful, pink is romantic and green is -- a problem. Artists often express consternation over using the color green. It’s as though this one color, so predominant in the landscape, holds some mystery that artists must master. Despite its connotation as a restful, natural color, it can be tricky to use.

Green is found at the very center of the visible spectrum and is the hue to which our eyes are most responsive. We’re able to distinguish more shades of green than any other color, therefore, people have an intuitive, experiential understanding of green, whether consciously or not. This innate awareness can make using accurate and interesting greens a challenge. The most naïve observer can easily spot the wrong green used in a painting. Often the artist knows something is off, but has trouble finding the correction.

Santa Fe, 9" x 18"

WARM OR COOL

Residing between the primary colors yellow and blue, directly astride the cusp of warm and cool temperatures on the color wheel, green cannot easily be classified as simply warm or cool. Ask anyone to divide the color wheel in half, with warm on one side and cool on the other, and almost invariably they will draw a line placing yellow on the warm side and yellow-green on the cool. But isolate this same yellow-green and they’ll identify it as a warm color. In the surrounding colors of a painting green may function as either a warm or cool color. This variety of temperature may be part of what makes green challenging to use.

If temperature is the primary issue, why is purple -- made from warm red and cool blue -- not subject to the same complaints among artists? Perhaps part of the reason is that purple resides squarely in the cool half of the color wheel. Add to that the fact that the yellow component of green adds intensity to the mix, while the red factor in purple is related more to temperature. Intensity and temperature are separate issues. The red in purple makes a concentrated color, but not one that’s necessarily intense, while an emphasis on yellow can make green extremely intense. The intensity of yellows used to make green may sometimes make for garish, surrealistic greens. As a result, some artists charge pastel manufacturers with making unnatural or brassy greens.

“So what?” responds Bob Strohsahl, maker of Great American Artworks pastels. “As long as manufacturers are making a full line of reliably standard greens in addition to the ‘garish’ ones, ‘unnatural’ greens might be useful to some artists.” However, he notes that when making pastels, green pigments tend to drift toward blue as they lighten. “The trick is to keep greens green as we make lighter values.” An overabundance of cool, light greens can limit the pastelist’s choices.

Some artists feel overwhelmed at trying to find the correct shade of green. My experience with this problem might be instructive. Years ago I found that I had quite a collection of green pastels, perhaps three times as many sticks as any other color. But when I organized my palette I discovered that instead of having more greens I had multiples of every green made. My dissatisfaction had led me to purchase more and more, trying to find the “right” green.

Wet Sneaker Morning, 12" x 18"

The cure came when master pastelist Albert Handell, who has been so instructive to so many emerging pastelists, urged me to paint only green subject matter. He suggested I paint trees, bushes, grasses or any other subject that was solely or predominantly green. As I progressed in this experiment, bored with the same old greens, I quickly reached into the rest of my palette to add interest to the work. I soon discovered that I could use red, lavender, gold, orange, purple, magenta, blue, yellow and any other color I had on hand to enhance my greens. Using green became an adventure as I explored these many variations.

LOCAL COLOR

Like so many, I was convinced that because the local color was green I had to begin with and continue using green there. Instead, a great variety of colors under, over and next to green make it far more interesting and believable. Think, “warm in the sunlight, cool in the shade.” Sunlit greens contain somewhat more warmth, hence yellow, so begin the warm areas of green using yellow, orange, red or pink. Greens in shade are cooler, so use blue, purple or magenta.

Evening Complements (detail)

Experiment with this idea to find the combinations that please you most. To paint foliage try putting down a light, bright orange next to a dark, cool purple. Then cover both with soft strokes of medium green. Or, first put down a very light stroke of green and then go into it with touches of orange and purple to make sunlight and shadows. Try yellow and blue or red and blue-violet beneath or on top of green. You might also experiment with making your own greens by blending blue and yellow on the paper or use bold broken strokes of blue and yellow.

Be careful not to over-green areas. If you need to strengthen the colors in and around green, you might begin with a grisaille underpainting or an underdrawing done in charcoal and choose colors based on the light to dark values needed. Based on value alone you can use a great number of different colors together. Color is then predicated on the tone first, which can make for exciting color choices. This can strengthen green by adding a host of colors of the same or similar value alongside or mixed into the green.

Instead of trying to find the green that most accurately matches what you see, use another color to mimic, replace or strengthen it. In an area of shadow use the darkest blue or a very dark burgundy or purple -- and no green. In the sunlight, choose bright orange or magenta, rather than green. Force yourself to think about value before color, as well as the temperature of the color.

MAKING MUD

Won’t all those different colors make mud? Many artists theorize that the recipe for a muddy, grimy color is one part warm mixed with one part cool. However, mud is a function of temperature and value. If you mix warms and cools the result will often look muddy, but mud is most affected by the use of differing values. When you’re careful to retain analogous values in an area you can avoid dirty color. For example, look at the greens in Evening Complements. The lighter areas of foliage are made using orange, copper, gold, lavender, yellow-green and green. These warm and cool colors are of the same value, resulting in an exciting, clear warm green that isn’t muddy or gloomy. Likewise, the shadowed side of the foliage is made up of red-violet, cool purple, blue, turquoise and green. Again, the similarity of values allows clear color even though the temperatures are both warm and cool.

Lavender Sky (detail)

According to artist and pastel manufacturer Terry Ludwig, over-blending colors is the main culprit in making mud. “Some blending can be useful, but if you don’t keep the colors somewhat separate they become mud, and if they contain too much white it gets pasty looking too.” Using light layers or broken color can create optical blending that’s far more interesting than the single-note, ordinary colors that result from too much blending.

MAKING SPACE

In a landscape the goal is to create an impression of space and distance. As green fades into the distance the yellow component is filtered out by the atmosphere. To give your painting a sense of air, remember that the farther away they are, the cooler, bluer and paler the greens. This is true of all colors, of course, but this makes green particularly challenging because it’s made primarily of warm yellow, which appears close, and cool blue, which creates distance. Use warm yellow-greens in the foreground, and cool, blued greens for the background. Don’t allow olive green to become too blue in the distance, or blue-green to become too yellow in the foreground.

Significant humidity can increase the number of values perceived and necessitate a greater palette of greens since a wet climate is usually a green place. Sometimes this can baffle even a green connoisseur.

Ludwig, whose set of 85 greens have become foundational for many pastelists, was heard to remark while painting on location in sultry Atlanta, Ga., that he didn’t have the right green. His greens, which run the gamut from intense warm yellow-greens to the darkest cool blue-greens, enhanced with additions of cool reds, pale blues and warm yellows, were made to fill colors he felt were missing from his palette. “But there are a lot of nuances in Georgia in August,” he chuckles, noting he’s from Colorado, “and I still didn’t have enough with me.”

Certain greens characterize different areas of the country, but does that mean more artists in Vermont use Vermont Green, one of the Great American colors? “There’s some regional preference,” Strohsahl says. “Blue-greens for the northeast, yellow-greens in the southwest, although this is a generalization. There are lots of exceptions.” Vermont green is called that simply because, “I like Vermont,” explains Strohsahl. “Green sales are fairly consistent across the board. I think this is so because green occurs everywhere and not just in vegetation.”

COLOR WHEEL

No photograph can possibly represent the variety of greens you see in the world with your eye. The experience of painting on location will teach you more about green than any photograph. The human eye can see some 7,000,000 colors, a variety no film can begin to approach, so to appreciate the diversity of color it’s best to spend time observing and recording what you see in nature.

Final Touches, 12" x 9"

Our eyes have millions of light-sensitive photoreceptor cells called cones. When saturated with one color, the eye automatically supplies the complementary color as an after-image. You may have experienced the effect of staring at a green square and, upon looking away, seeing a mysterious red square floating in its place. The after-image provides the complement of the color. While you’re on location, search out the red after-image of green and record it in your painting. This is guaranteed to enliven your colors, since complements invariably heighten visual contrasts.

As you practice seeing in a very green environment you will begin to perceive all the colors of the color wheel. Look for the yellows and oranges of green in sunlight, the blues and purples of the shadowed greens, and the afterimage of red amid all of the numerous greens there.

Use warm and cool greens to add depth. Enhance green with all the colors in your palette, paying attention to how much you blend or leave the strokes visible. Layer colors together to boost the power of the greens you have on hand. Seek the ways that you can record all the beauty of green, the restful and useful color of nature.

CHAPTER TWENTY -- TEMPERATURE

2010-06-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

Hot Afternoon, 9" x 12"

What does the temperature of a color do in your painting? It may be as simple as warm colors advance and cool colors recede, but perhaps there is more. What happens when you place a warm color over a cool one -- or vice versa? Does anything different happen if you place a hot color beneath or on top of a cool one?

Let’s begin with a definition of warm, cool and hot. There are three primary colors: red, yellow and blue. Two of those colors – red and yellow – are warm, and only one – blue – is cool. Where you divide the color wheel into warm or cool is usually a personal decision, yet what artist has not used warm purple or cool orange? Nonetheless, basically two-thirds of the colors on the wheel are warm.

When we describe a hot color we usually refer to temperature only to a degree. More often the word “hot” means intense, and applies to more colors than just those in the red and yellow range. Usually, however, these intense colors are warm in nature. For instance, you might have a hot orange or red, but what do you picture when I say hot green or hot blue?

If you pictured a green with dashes of red beneath it or a blue with orange peeking through, you are thinking like an artist. When we put complements together, whether on top of one another or side by side, we are using temperature to affect color.

If you place a hot color beneath one of lesser intensity, say layering a bright yellow under a pale blue, you often achieve an optical mix that results in green. Doesn’t the same thing happen if you place a pale yellow beneath a pale blue? Yes, but to a much lesser degree. The result of that combination is usually described more as a slightly bluish green.

Much of the effect is dependent on how you choose to lay down your strokes. For instance, you might decide to put down a soft layer of yellow and then cover that with another soft layer of blue. The result blends on the paper into bluish green. If you put down a thick impasto stroke of yellow and cover it with choppy strokes of blue it results in broken color that suggests green. Think of the difference in layering the sky or the grasses -- soft, smooth layers of sky versus broken strokes of grass. If you use the side of your pastel to slightly blend layers you achieve a very different look using temperature than you do if you use the end of the pastel to put in lines. Both become green but to varying degrees.

Experiment with putting down different colors. What happens?

Try hot over cool.

Cool over hot.

Warm over hot.

Hot over warm.

Warm over cool.

Cool over warm.

Cool over cool.

Warm over warm.

Hot over hot.

Next, how about using a split-complement, the color to each side of the complement, beneath or on top? How does that affect things? That’s too many color experiments to count – I'll let you make that chart.

I challenge you to simply experiment with colors and see what happens when you try different combinations. The charts you make will help you remember what you discovered. Then apply what you learn to layering colors in your paintings.

Almost Spring, 12" x 18"

CHAPTER NINETEEN -- COLOR THEORY

2010-06-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

Hillside Progression 2, 11" x 23"

Color is the lifeblood of a painting. It’s the energy and animation, the element that inspires the heart and touches the core of the viewer. It’s extremely personal and yet has universal overtones. It has been codified and studied, yet always seems to escape definitions that restrict its use. Out of the frustration of creating muddy color in pastels, as well as successful attempts to use compelling color, arises the greatest growth. In the hands of the master pastelist color can have more depth and excitement than any other medium.

The rules of color use must be respected and understood so that they may be skillfully utilized or more skillfully broken. As youngsters we came to know that yellow and blue make green, whether we learned it from a gentle teacher or from a television jingle. Yet teaching children further basics of color use are often neglected, left to the realm of play alone. The art student often comes to color in her studies last, after studying composition, drawing and value, which are somewhat more easily taught. Color seems more mysterious, a bit perplexing and hard to explain.

There comes a time in each artist’s career when she must question green and define it as both yellow and blue -- and perhaps think of green in terms of red (its complement) or orange and violet (its split complements.) That’s when color becomes personal, intuitive and truly useful to the artist. It’s also the time when questions come, doubts rage and real learning begins.

Glow, 12" x 18"

The student approaches the master to ask how to make color succeed, how to use it to freshen the expression of a painting, to escape the dreaded dulls of personal habit. “I want to loosen up the way I use color,” she declares. She’s read the books and considered theories in the abstract. She knows the color wheel and has become apprenticed to the master in her head. Yet nothing replaces the pastel-beneath-the-fingernails work. The master says, “You want to learn about color? Use it! Paint, paint, paint!” These questions cannot be answered by theories or rules, only by experience.

So what questions are best? What might the student do to learn from her work? Each journey is individual, with its own moments of growth and personal dissatisfactions. Questions often beget more questions, yet good questions finally result in some answers. We must share the answers, which no doubt will show in the master’s final body of work. Even more valuable might be sharing the questions, which is the ultimate role of the teacher.

California Skyline, 12" x 18"

General color theory holds that cool colors recede while warm colors advance, complements laid down side by side excite the eye, dark colors have more weight than light colors and intense colors should be used to accent not inundate. There’s no denying that color is relational, that it works in association with surrounding colors. These have becomes rules because they commonly hold true. But may they be abused and broken, and thereby made to work for different reasons, to other ends? Why might I not flood the paper with the most brilliant color imaginable to achieve a somber mood? Is it possible? How can I know if I only accept traditional wisdom?

Color and value are inextricably linked. Years of traditional thought hold that one should structure a painting from a drawing and value standpoint before adding color. Begin with a great rendering, sort out the values and stay true to those decisions, laying down accurately matched colors over your chosen values, and you will have a successful color painting when done. Argue with this and you can spend hours at any pastel convention deep in philosophy over lunch. Argue it on paper instead and see where you end up.

Try structuring the painting solely on color first -- no drawing at all, nothing on that paper but the gaping, empty surface. Begin with the most neglected and unused pastel of any color in your palette. Do you neglect magenta? Put down a definitive swath of it across the paper. How about that brilliant yellow-green, the one you’ve only used one time to touch the tips of sunlit leaves in the final dabs on the summer trees? What happens where a splotch of it touches the magenta? Does it make your heart race or add a hint of moisture along your upper lip? Go there anyway. Now find another exciting color, one that’s dangerous in combination with these two, the last one you would choose. It doesn’t matter if the reason you avoid it is because in the past you’ve learned it makes mud. Mud can be beautiful -- and fun to play with, especially when you aren’t worrying about the result.

Day's Angry End, 9" x 12"

Rather than abandoning yourself to the anxiety of some self-imposed goal, let color become the goal. Do you love the rich, deep-dark hues of reddish purple or the lyrical strains of lavender and orange as they link? Put them down on your paper. Respond spontaneously to your color choices without asking or analyzing.

Perhaps the best advice is to stop painting somewhat sooner. Instead of abandoning yourself to the experiment and putting all the color onto one soon-beleaguered page, hold back, experiment and breathe a little between each rush of excitement or fear. Take time to think and formulate the next questions. Make many such experiments. Do a hundred of them! Allow time and experience to become the teachers and your new questions to determine the next try.

Then just go paint.

Hot Summer Night, 12" x 18"

Mesa Encantada, 9" x 12"

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN -- SNOW

2010-06-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

Rio Snow, 12" x 9"

Snow settles over the land with a shimmer and weight that blurs and softens the shapes of everything it covers. Its startling whiteness shifts the values of the landscape painting, forcing the artist to paint the ground, rather than the sky, as the lightest plane in the picture, and to structure the painting carefully to achieve a clean, bold whiteness. Although many think snow a simple subject to paint, it presents special challenges to pastelists because of the medium’s inherent tendency to blend on the paper when applied in layers and the fact that colors that are not crisply applied and left untouched can become muddy looking. Avoiding these pitfalls takes forethought and planning, as well as knowledge in handling the medium.

The first hazard the artist encounters in painting snow is that of value shift. It seems simple enough: In a snow painting the land becomes the lightest plane, the sky is medium-light and the trees are dark. But does the fact that the land plane becomes lightest perhaps force the sky to become a medium value? No! The sky is still the same light value it has always been, but the ground is often lighter in value when covered with a fresh blanket of snow. Value relationships are the key. Another casualty of the shift in values is often the colors in the snow. It’s very easy to see the snow scene as overly black and white, neglecting the chance for surprising color, as well as simplifying the value range far too much. This can result in unrealistically strong contrast, which omits medium-dark and medium-light values entirely.

Mountain Snow, 8" x 11"

Photographic prints, especially those taken by amateur photographers, often validate oversimplification and lead the student artist astray. Because cameras average the light coming into the lens, in all but the most expert of hands a print will be overly dark in dark areas or overly light in light areas. All detail and nuance of color is lost in the shadows or washed away by the light. Spend time observing the values and colors of snow without relying on a photograph to portray it for you. As you step outside on a cold, snowy day you might first notice the whiteness of the snow, and then perhaps the color of the sky. Spend time looking for the subtleties of color in the snow. Generally you will see warm colors in the sunlight and cool colors in shadows. When the light is one color the shadows are usually the opposite, but the color depends on many variables. Remember aerial perspective holds true. Distance flavors all colors, strewing the light around the landscape so that colors become lighter in value and cooler in color as they recede from the viewer in all instances -- except that of white. As white recedes it becomes slightly darker and duller. It remains its whitest in the near foreground.

Sunlit Snow, 12" x 12" (underdrawing, charcoal)

Shadows on snow will shift with distance, generally from greenish-blue in the fore to lavender-blue in the middle ground to pure blue in the distance, as the air progressively filters out yellow and red. Shadow colors on snow often depend on the color of the sky. Look for a shadow crossing new-fallen snow. See how the sky color is captured there, dark beneath its source and lightening slightly with distance. Snow is extremely reflective. Because it’s light in color (literally containing all colors in white light), snow reflects a greater percentage of light. Consider a snow-covered hillside that forms a soft bowl at its foot. Depending on which way it faces, the shadowed face may contain subtly different colors because the sky reflected in it will vary slightly. The sky is somewhat darker at the zenith and paler at the horizon, as well as slightly warmer in the quadrant near the sun and cooler away from the sun. This means that the colors in shadows on snow may be some permutation of warm or cool, very pale or somewhat darker, and range in color from blue-green to lavender to pure blue depending on the distance from the viewer. This allows for exciting color possibilities in both sunlight and shadows on snow. Reflections in snow can also be found in more intimate surroundings. Look for the color of a wall or fence reflected against the snow bank beneath it. Bounce colors from nearby objects into the shadows, thereby creating particularly beautiful temperature changes. A reflection can season the color of the shadow nearby, causing another dimension of color in the snow. Layering colors creates subtle variations, particularly in deep shadow areas. Even the darkest shadows in snow are fairly light in value.

After a heavy snowfall, the outlines of objects become muffled and soft, blanketed with a thick, velvety whiteness that blunts hard edges. The barn becomes a giant pillow pointing its corner skyward, the car a marshmallow shape in the hollow of the driveway. Trees become weighed down by the wetness of the snow. Look for the way the branches are pushed down until the snow atop them becomes part of the bank beneath. Don’t miss the heaviness of snow. Also, find places where the rich, dark soil punctuates the snow as it begins to melt, forming deep pools around plants and grasses. Concentrate on these edges, which are crisp where they touch the ground but remain rounded above. Be especially careful in places where dark colors reside in front of light ones, and must therefore be painted dark over light. It’s best not to overwork these spots, which is bound to cause muddy-looking patches. Plan your painting carefully so that you can use one deliberate stroke of color, then stop while it’s fresh.

A snow drift is an exercise in hard and soft, sharp edges and blended slopes. Find the direction of the sun and the defining shadow. Without any shadow, drifts are seen as subtle variations of warm and cool. Look for the crisp line along the top edge and the soft slide of snow, like a mountain in miniature. See how you can define this slope using colors that are layered and softly blended together to create the shadow side, adding a line of light color where the sun blazes. If there is a cornice where the snow has blown over the top and frozen in place or a cast shadow crossing the drift, you have an added chance to define the shape of the drift with color, blending and edges.

Winter Sun and Shadows, 12" x 18"

Although there are generalizations that can assist you in painting snow, hard and fast rules need to be suspended. The reflective brightness of snow changes everything. So be adventurous, try new colors, layers and new techniques. Painting snow with pastels is a very satisfying experience. Snow is light in color and value, the strongest range of colors available in the medium. Pastelists therefore have virtually endless choices of colors to use. Snow’s rounded softness is easily captured by lightly blending colors to show the swish and slide of shadows. The reflective qualities of pastel mimic the sparkle and shine of snow with ease. All in all, pastel is well suited to painting snow.

FALLING SNOW

There are different techniques you can use to paint falling snowflakes, but it’s best to paint the entire image before adding any falling flakes. Choose a subject with muted light since snow falls from clouds that obscure the light. It’s not necessary to have a photograph of snow falling on the scene you’re painting since photos are hard to capture, but study such photos for evidence of how to make snow look realistic.

For instance, there will not be any strong shadows in the photo, nor will there be strong dark and light contrasts. Paint the softly muted colors that come from low ambient light. Use a palette of subdued light to medium-light colors, with an occasional dark to punctuate the painting. Remember that in a high-key painting with low contrast darks become very strong punctuation. Carefully place these darks to draw the eye. Because the light is low, your lightest colors will not be strongly white in color, so reserve the use of white for the end, assuring yourself that you’ll have lights to use if needed. Many paintings of falling snow will have no pure white in them at all. Put your white aside for the majority of the painting.

Notice how falling snow looks in a photograph. There are near and far flakes seen in varying degrees of light colors, the nearer ones bigger and brighter. The pattern of flakes is random and swirling, not evenly spaced like wallpaper. The flakes may look light against darker areas and sometimes darker against the whiter areas -- but not always. At times the light flakes simply disappear against the lightest areas of the painting. You don’t have to show every flake. Less is often more!

To make the final falling flakes choose several colors in various light and medium-light shades. Begin by dotting in a few key spots to draw the eye, adding colors judiciously. Notice the angle at which the flakes are falling. Sometimes the wind whips them into swirls, although there’s usually a prevailing direction. Stop after each layer of dots, making sure to vary the sizes and colors to create the illusion of depth. Do not allow all of the dots to be uniform in shape. Fat flakes may be oddly lumpy. Small flakes may appear as short dashes. If you make the mistake of painting every falling flake as a dash of the same length and color it will end up looking like pouring rain. Take care to see how the pattern of flakes draws the eye -- and remember, it’s easier to put a few more in than take them out! If you make a mistake and feel the falling flakes must be changed, you’ll be forced to wipe out quite a bit of your painting.

You may try using white spray paint to make snow. Carefully drift the spray over your finished painting. Be cautious, however, as once it’s there any changes you try to make will be obvious and usually unsuccessful. Perhaps a more effective means to make incidental snowflakes is to use a razor blade to shave off bits of pale-colored pastel onto the surface of your finished painting, laid flat on a tabletop. A second pass can be done with a very light drift of pure white pastel to simulate the nearest and brightest snowflakes. When the results please you, place a piece of clean newsprint over the top of the finished painting and briskly rub the flat of your hand over it to burnish the bits into the paper.

Cold Blue, 9" x 12"

Last Snow, 9" x 12"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN –GARDENS

2010-06-02T13:55:00.000-07:00

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal where this was originally published.)

Summer Hollyhocks, 24" x 18"

The lively textures and patterns, alluring colors and peaceful atmosphere of gardens have inspired many artists to paint them. People visit a garden to relax in a shady corner or stroll past cheerful, sunlit flowers on a summer day. Spending time there is delightful. Capturing its essence in a painting is appealing. What makes a successful painting of a garden? The answer to this is a varied as the innumerable artists who have painted countless gardens, yet certain generalizations can be applied.

One of the pleasures of painting a garden is the necessity to spend time observing it, studying the ways various plants overlap and contrast, the diverse textures created by foliage and flowers, trees, bushes and grasses. Spend some time examining the details of the garden. Notice the way the garden wall or fence delineates the space; look for the perspective created by the pathway curving away; scrutinize the colors that recede from bright to pale. If you take the time to do a number of sketches or color studies it will help to fix the garden in your mind, allowing you to begin to sort through the complexity to find what underlies it all. You may feel overwhelmed if you try to draw or paint everything you see in a garden, which can look like a confusing riot of tiny shapes.

As you plan your garden painting, notice first the direction of the sun and the resulting shadows. Locate a focal area, perhaps a place where certain blossoms glow in the sunlight, or a pathway that leads the eye to light flowers against a dark background. Contrasts of dark and light or heightened colors help to frame the subject of your painting. If the scope of the entire garden overwhelms you, search out a section to concentrate on so that you’re viewing only one small segment. Limit what you study to begin with so that you aren’t defeated by the feeling that there’s simply too much to paint. Face the garden wall or the nearby hedge with a flowerbed in front instead of looking out into the seemingly impossible density of the rest of the garden.

UNDERLYING SHAPES

Whether concentrating on this one little part or painting the extent of the whole area, look for the depth of space, locating the boundaries of the garden and the large overlapping shapes. First make a sketch, identifying these big shapes. Then define the values and add the textures and details you plan to use. This will help you understand where each object is located before putting down any colors. It may help to study each element, doing a drawing of a part—perhaps the values and textures of the bed of flowers or the rocks and resulting shadows they cast on the walkway. Study each element, distilling the shapes to their essence. One way to help refine complex details down to more manageable shapes is to squint until your eyes are almost closed and look for the patterns of dark and light only, then record them on your paper as larger areas of value.

Flagstone Garden, 18" x 24"

Another helpful way to simplify things is to search out negative shapes. Most of the time when we consider negative shapes we think of drawing the sky to define the shape of the tree, but you might also record the dark shapes of the plants behind to define the light shapes of those in front, or the light mass of the flowers in sunlight to define the medium mass of other plantings. In this way you can begin to distinguish the simple light and dark relationships. Then you can work from the large shapes to smaller ones, finally adding details, defining values and colors as you go. If you begin with nothing but details it’s easy to become confounded and miss the underlying organization of the garden.

CONTOURS AND VALUES

Consider the dirt—a good foundation for a garden as well as a garden painting. Just as it’s necessary to have good soil to plant, so you need to record the color of the dirt that lies beneath the plants and trees. In some cases, toning your paper a color that mimics the soil can be a good beginning, although this color should not become overly formulized. It may be beige but perhaps it could be lavender, ochre, or rusty orange. Whatever value or color you choose to tone your paper, be sure to consider adding a suggestion of dirt to any area that’s not completely obscured by plants, such as the areas between flagstones or around the edges of flowerbeds.

Whether you’re painting a civilized, formal garden or a more natural looking country patch, it’s necessary to understand the terrain on which it lies. Most gardens are planted on flat ground—but not always. Look for slopes or small mounds, raised planters or beds that elevate the level of plantings. Determine where pathways cut through foliage, whether they are paved with flagstones or are simply a dirt track, in order to indicate how the garden is laid out. Grasses and bushes may make a backdrop to a particularly showy plant or flower. A skillful gardener will plan contrasting colors, textures and sizes of plants to feature their special qualities. Don’t ‘fake it’ when it comes to the underlying layout. You must understand even what cannot be seen in the finished painting in order to be able to adequately explain it, such as where the path turns away or the ground slants. You may use cross-contour lines in your underdrawing to help indicate the different directions of the planes of the ground, plants, walls and sky, if they can be seen, so that as you begin to paint you have no difficulty understanding and explaining these to your viewer. Additionally, seek out and strengthen directional elements, such as the upward movement of tall flowers, the horizontal course produced by vegetation creeping along the ground or a wall, or the downward sweep of overhanging branches, as well as the differing levels created by various kinds of plants. Carefully shift your viewer’s eye using these to create pleasing movement in your painting.

In the sometimes-intimate spaces of a garden, value patterns can be a bit different from those of the typical landscape painting. Where you can construe a landscape as generally containing light values in the sky, medium-light values along the ground and dark values in the trees, the garden often resists such simple classification. Close quarters make for deeper shade, while the complex relationships of intersecting plants, trees and other elements defy formulizing. This requires you to seek out the underlying value structure that characterizes the garden you’re painting, recording the dark, medium and light values you see there.

FLOWERS AND COLORS

Flowers are undoubtedly the stars of a garden painting. There’s nothing more striking than the blaze of colorful beds of blossoming flowers. All the colors of the rainbow can be discovered there, cheerfully nodding their heads in the sunlight or softly decorating a shady corner. Focus on one dominant color to unify your painting rather than trying to include every color you see, which can sometimes result in a painting that is disjointed. Use flowers with complementary colors such as purple and yellow pansies to make a jazzy, bright painting, or choose analogous colors such as soft blue, violet and pink flowers to achieve a quieter serenity.

Bright Garden, 14" x 11"

To paint different blooms, identify the characteristic shape of an individual flower. Study the flounced edges and flop-eared sides of irises. Look at the rounded depths of roses. Notice the spiky cups of daylilies. Every flower can be characterized by series of shapes, which can then be designed into typical strokes, whether flounced, rounded or spiked. The idea is to paint masses of flowers broadly, making a recognizable flower using a carefully shaped stroke. Pay attention to the growth habits of different species, whether they are open and loosely arranged like hollyhocks, or densely packed together in a mass like daisies. Use these strokes, in the proper shape and scale, to create the effect of flowers rather than trying to paint each petal, stalk and leaf.

Color creates energy and depth in a painting. Dashes of brilliantly intense colors should be reserved for the blossoms in the main focal area. Cool, duller shades in the receding portions create a sense of distance, however shallow the space may be. This does not mean that you can’t include flowers peripheral to the focal point, but any further blooms must play a supporting role to direct the eye back to the stars of the show. Keep these co-stars less intense to indicate their relative distance, as well. Soften edges and diminish contrasts of secondary flowerbeds.

Edges, shapes and values are all important elements, but color is essential to the garden. One key to featuring the exciting colors of flowers is the steady influence of green. Green is a color that people sometimes find challenging to use. While it’s

necessary to have a good range of green pastels on hand, from dark to light values, it’s also helpful to have a variety of blue-greens and yellow-greens in your palette. Various pastel manufacturers offer a large selection of greens to choose from but the wise pastelist will think of ways she can layer an exciting assortment of warm and cool colors over, under or amid green to give a lively or subdued effect.

PATTERNS AND TEXTURES

As in painting the foliage of a tree, plants are best painted with a spare hand. Rather than trying to laboriously render every blossom, bud, tendril, shoot and leaf, which can quickly become visually boring, find different strokes that will effectively suggest these details in areas peripheral to the focal point. Use this suggestive stroke where a dark mass of foliage meets a lighter one, or where there’s a dramatic color change. These areas of interest indicate the amount and types of leaves. Use a quick squiggle, a slanting repetitive stroke, or repeated dots and dashes to represent different kinds of foliage. Vary textures to mimic different kinds of leaves, from the long, strapping stroke of the iris leaf, to the rounded dinner plate shaped hollyhock leaf, to the repeated, quick slashes of grasses or stems. Keep in mind that if you detail the painting to the same degree all over the page, visually there will be no detail at all. Only where there’s a deviation in size, boldness or tone is the eye stopped. Detail should reside at or near the area of greatest interest in your painting, drawing the eye to the stars of the show. Here is where you can place dramatic darks and lights, bright colors, interesting highlights or strong individual touches.

Spend time in the garden studying the shapes, contours and values of your upcoming painting, then carefully plan and delineate the space in order to take control of a very complex subject. Develop different strokes that will simply and capably describe foliage and flowers, and then add dramatic contrasts, exciting colors and interesting details to those elements that are the stars of the show. Enjoy the time you spend learning how to paint gardens.

Garden Trio, 18" x 12"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN -- WATER AND REFLECTIONS

2010-05-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal where this was originally published.)

Granite Tranquility, 18' x 12”

The mysterious mirror image of the world glides over the surface of the water, an elastic likeness that swells and shrinks as the water moves beneath it, an elegant, fluid edge where light and dark diverge. Water’s quiet reflections add refreshing color and sparkle to your paintings.

Pastel is well suited to painting reflections, feathering over many soft, light layers of silken color or finger blending thick, buttery layers to achieve a subdued likeness of the real world.

You must first consider your point of view when painting reflections. How high above the surface you are will determine what you see reflected. Perhaps you remember from your high school physics class that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. This handy phrase will be of real help when you come to understand how it applies to your painting.

If you paint only what you see and never make changes, your painting will most likely contain believable reflections. However, if you decide to diverge from reality and add a tree over here or delete a hill over there -- something artists do quite regularly -- you need to understand how your perspective affects what is reflected.

Imagine a large pond on a clear, sunny day, with a few clouds floating overhead. Grasses, trees and hills around it. If you are standing at the shoreline or sitting in a boat the angle of incidence will be fairly shallow, allowing you to see a clear reflection of the grasses and trees lining the bank and perhaps the low hills behind. If, on the other hand, you are standing on a hillside looking down into the water, the angle will be much steeper, allowing you to see more of the sky and clouds overhead and little or none of the shoreline details.

As you come closer to the pond or move away from it, the angle of view is affected. The reflection you see depends on your relative distance from and degree above the water line.

To understand more clearly, place a mirror on a table and raise and lower your head, noticing how the reflection changes. As you lower your eye level you can see the items closest to the edge of the mirror’s surface. As you raise your head, creating a steeper angle of reflection, you can see more of the objects that are high above the mirror, even those that are almost directly overhead.

Notice, too, how the objects reflected change as you approach the mirror or back away from it. The nearer you are to the mirror’s edge the higher you can see, and the farther back you are the more you can see the low details along the edge.

Take some time to conduct a few experiments with a mirror to help you visualize your point of view when painting reflections and better appreciate how important it is to identify the angle at which you are seeing them.

Have you ever stood at the edge of a pond and found yourself leaning out over the water to be able to catch a glimpse of the fish and rocks beneath the surface? As you look almost straight down into the water you can see more clearly without much reflection obscuring your view, except perhaps a very pale reflection of the sky above you. Conversely, when you look out at the distant surface of the water in the middle of the pond, you generally see only the sky reflected. The angle at which you view the water’s surface will determine the amount of bottom detail and reflection to paint.

Reflections, subdued by the water, have an otherworldly look. This is partly because all the values shift slightly due to the diffusion of light, as some of the reflected light is scattered.

Acequia's Mirror, 9" x 12"

To accurately show this shift in value, paint light values slightly darker, dark values slightly lighter and middle values close to the same. This means there is somewhat less contrast in the reflection, though the degree to which this is visible depends on several variables.

If the reflection is in still, very clear water that has little or no sediment, the values of the reflection may be nearly identical, with only an incrementally small change. The more sediment there is, the more there is a shift in color and value, whether it is from the whitening effect of glacial runoff, the rich earth colors seen in water stirred up by a current or the tea-like color of water steeped with leaves and bark.

Bear in mind that a photograph will almost always be deceptive, leading you astray by averaging the light, oftentimes resulting in a nearly identical reflection with hardly any shift in values. When you are out on location analyze the reflections you see and notice the slightly muted contrast.

To begin painting still water reflections, first paint the object and then record the local color of its reflection. If the mountain is lavender, it is a good idea to put a touch of the same lavender into the water and if the tree is yellow, add a breath of yellow there. Later in the process you can make it more believable by softly layering, blending or feathering the surface. Begin with a light touch so that you have room to adjust using subsequent layers of color.

To achieve the liquid sheen of a reflection in clear, flat water, try feathering over many layers of pastels. You will need at least three or four light layers in place, already capturing the color, value and shape of the reflection. Then use a pastel pencil or an extra soft thin vine charcoal stick to gently whisk over the surface, as lightly as you would use a butterfly wing while trying not to damage it. A particularly long piece of charcoal will keep you from bearing down too hard and making gray marks in the pastel, although some graying will occur. This can add to the illusion by reducing color and contrast, and is a valuable method to achieve the illusion of still water reflections.

Finger blending is another technique that can be used to create believable reflections. Use a quick stroke downward over several layers of color to get the slightly smeared quality often seen in reflections. If blending on sanded paper, be careful to have a pillow of pastel beneath your finger so that you don’t abrade your skin.

Keep the reflections of upright, vertical objects straight, and make sure leaning objects lean in the same direction. If the tree leans to the right its reflection also leans to the right. Remember that the sky is reflected upside down, too, so blend from light blue at the distant shoreline to dark at the bottom of the page, where the zenith of the sky may be reflected.

To help you paint accurate reflections, turn your painting on its side and compare the alignment of objects with their reflections. Be sure that the reflections are directly below objects -- or in this case, directly beside them. Also keep in mind that all vertical items, across the width of the entire painting, will be reflected parallel to one another if they are parallel in reality. Don’t let your reflections lean needlessly or converge anywhere.

While your painting is sideways, visually compare the length of each object to be sure you have accurately portrayed the length of its reflection. In perfectly calm water, reflections are not elongated, so if the water begins directly at the base of the object its reflection is no longer than the object itself. You must carefully judge the amount you see reflected of anything farther from the shoreline.

RIPPLES

In moving water the reflection becomes broken by ripples, which makes it appear somewhat longer than the object. The amount of distortion is determined by the degree of movement in the water. These reflections have a rounded, fluid shape that can be painted by carefully adding pools of light into the dark areas and dark into light areas at the edges of the reflections. Pay close attention to the scale of these strokes, making sure to match them to the relative distance, large in the foreground and successively smaller in the distance.

Moving water can delightfully skew the shape of reflected objects. Tall straight items, such as the mast of a boat, can become a series of liquid loops or circles detached in the water. In Surrounded you can see how the reflection exaggerates the shape of a nearby lamppost until it is virtually unrecognizable.

Botanical Pond, 9" x 12"

One of the delights of painting reflections is that objects can be revealed that may not otherwise be visible in the body of the painting. For instance, in the painting Summer Reflections you can see the clouds overhead reflected in the center foreground, broken by the wet sand. Although the painting has a few distant wisps of clouds behind the mountains, the reflections indicate a white cloud higher overhead.

Objects that are not in the line of sight of the viewer might be seen in reflections, such as the underside of a dock or boat, or the feather patterns of a duck. For instance, the details of a tree branch that reaches out over the water may be visible, showing the leaf patterns and colors reflected in the water. Bright fall reeds or hillsides covered with colorful trees may be evident only as reflections.

To envision how to paint gentle, reflective ripples on a lake, think of the ripple as having a little mirror on each side. There are basically two reflective shapes, the front and back of the ripple, with the front side pointed toward you and the back pointed away. However, keep in mind that each mirror is supple and bends in all directions easily, curving and shaping reflections fluidly.

The ripple will reflect objects in essentially three different ways, depending on how far out in the water it is. In open water, in the center of our imaginary pond, the ripple will reflect two distinct areas of the sky, perhaps varying only slightly in color. This might be a reflection of the sky near the horizon and at the zenith, so it may be pale blue and slightly darker blue.

As the ripple nears the overhanging trees it will reflect the green of the tree on one side and the blue sky on the other side. The sky color depends on what portion is reflected, and different ripples may reflect slightly different parts of the sky, so be sure not to make these a uniform blue.

As the ripple comes under the tree branch it will begin to reflect only the tree. Perhaps one side will reveal the dark of the trunk and branches while the other reflects the lighter green of the leaves. Pay close attention to these fluid reflections and consider what is being seen in the mirrors of the ripples.

If you are painting a larger body of water that is moved by the wind and has a broken surface, notice that the ripples in the near water are farther apart and larger. They recede into the distance to form a pattern or texture that looks much like tweed. Use small dashes of the characteristic colors to create the illusion of windblown water, noticing the amount of reflected color you see there.

SHADOWS

Shadows and reflections are independent of one another. As you walk around your imaginary pond, notice that the dead tree protruding from the middle casts a shadow that remains stationary but the reflection shifts to follow you. Stroll around until the view pleases you. Compose with this in mind.

Poblanos Reflections, 18" x 12”

When there is a shadow cast directly over the surface of the water one of two things will happen. Sometimes the shadow will darken the water, obscuring all reflections and darkening the entire area. When this occurs, paint the shadow colors in the water locally without any reflections. A shadow becomes particularly dark when there is a lot of sediment coloring the water, making it somewhat opaque. Take care not to rely on a photograph, since it will frequently over-darken the shadow.

Far more often a shadow cast over clear water allows you to see under the surface, breaking the reflection so that you can make out the bottom.

LAYERS

When you can see into the water, begin with the bottom layer, painting anything beneath the surface -- rocks, plants, fish, mud or sand. Do not neglect to paint the shadows cast by objects in sunlight under water.

Next paint anything you see on the surface of the water. This includes reflections, ripples, sparkles or shadows.

Then paint anything that is on top of the water, including dry rocks or reeds that protrude, logs, leaves, foam or anything else floating there, such as a boat or duck. Basically, paint from bottom to top layers, noting the local color of each object. The final addition of little touches such as tiny ripples where a rising fish disturbs the surface, or where the water bubbles over a submerged rock, completes the illusion.

When a reed or stalk of grass protrudes from the water you will see a slight change in direction of the stalk itself. This is because light bends when it enters the thicker water, moving more slowly there. The result is a little jump in direction, seen directly at the surface of the water. Be sure that the color of the reed beneath the water is somewhat darker to give the illusion of it being submerged. Its reflection in the water can be a pleasant surprise, a satisfying convergence of directions.

Puddles can also add an appealing dimension to a painting. Place a puddle in a low spot on the ground to reflect an area of particular interest. Puddles are so shallow that you see the color of the dirt showing through, influencing the color of the reflection, which can appear very delicate and pale.

Whether you paint a puddle or a pond, an inlet or a lake, take some time to study reflections. Use layering, feathering and blending to make soft, still water reflections, or precisely execute the sharp, liquid reflections of rippled water. Carefully consider your angle of view and how this affects reflected objects, and then let the beautiful, fluid world of reflections enhance your paintings.

Loose Reflections, 12" x 18”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN -- SHADOWS

2010-05-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal where this was originally published.)

Pyracantha, 18" x 12"

Light is the life of a painting, but shadows define the light. Leonardo da Vinci wrote, “Shadows are the manifestation by bodies of their forms. The form of bodies would not show their particulars without shadow.” If we think of “bodies” as objects in the world, Leonardo’s statement is clearer: Objects cast shadows, which show form.

Without light there is no shadow, so the source of the light and its direction become key. The sun casts soft shadows down a wall, showing the path of the branch and leaves overhead, as well as the uneven shape of the wall. Some parts of the shadow are sharply etched; others are silky soft, the degree of detail dependant on the distance the shadow travels.

Value is perhaps one of the most important considerations in painting shadows, requiring the artist to carefully choose just how dark or light a particular shadow is.

The color of a shadow often almost defies description. Gray is too simple to depict a complex blend of colors and will not do justice to shadows.

Because pastels are a semi-transparent medium they lend themselves to the subtle transparency of shadows. Whether put down in soft layers or gently blended, pastels make beautiful shadows.

In landscape painting the source of light is clearly the sun, warm and yellow, casting shadows across the land and other planes. Because we have only one sun, shadows are cast in only one direction. However, sunlight may be direct or reflected, which can account for the mystery of shadows. Reflected light can add delightful complications, causing variations in angles and colors. Look for the mingling of sharp, crisp shadows created by closer objects and the fat, rounded shadows from those farther away.

Indoors, warm or cool lights cast shadows of varying depth and color and, when combined with available daylight from windows, may cast shadows in different directions.

“In the shadows the mysteries dwell,” da Vinci is said to have remarked. Master of chiaroscuro, he used deep, dark shadows to focus the eye on areas of clear light, creating depth and mood in his paintings. He did not neglect the mid-tone shadows, however, understanding that “shadows can be infinitely obscure or display an infinity of nuances in the light tones."

To paint the fine distinctions that can be found in shadows you must first select their proper values. Look for the nuances da Vinci mentions, the variety of shadows from the deepest crevice to the most insubstantial whisper of shade from a distant cloud.

Sun Streaks, 8" x 17"

Gaze into the light area and analyze a shadow’s value using your peripheral vision to perceive correctly the proper tone of even the most delicate shadow. When you stare into shade your pupils dilate and your eyes adjust to the dimness so that over time you can almost see in the dark.

Make use of your peripheral vision even when using a photograph, to aid you in seeing values more accurately, but be aware that the photograph is at best inaccurate. If you rely on photographs to decide the value of the shadow you can easily be led astray. The camera is a far less sensitive instrument than the human eye and averages the available light, resulting in overly dark shadows.

Take time to look at shadows, recording their values in your mind’s eye, rather than copying a photo. That way, when you use a photograph you will remain independent of it and remember the relative transparency of shadows.

All shadows are transparent, except when no light is present in them at all. Most shadows allow the viewer to see details and colors within them, though not to the same degree as in the light plane. If they were not transparent our world would be reduced to pure black and white, all light or all shade. Instead there are degrees of shadows and only some are inky black.

Twilight Crossroads, 8" x 17"

When painted correctly, a shadow does not look like something that has been laid over an object. It becomes an integral part of the object. If the shadow looks like a sock draped over the wall it needs to be more transparent. Only in the deepest darkness are shadows so thoroughly black as to become opaque, and those are usually found in outside at night or in a very dark room.

The value of a shadow becomes progressively lighter as it travels away from the object casting it. Shadows are darker where they originate and lighter where they end, due to the addition of light reflected from the sky or ambient light in a room.

As a broad generalization, the shadow side of an object is somewhat darker than the shadow it casts, due to this addition of light in the horizontal plane. However, this can be affected by the local color of the object, so that a white wall will not be as dark as the shadow it casts on green grass.

Shadows are all around you. Take a moment and look at a cast shadow, noticing how it becomes slightly lighter as it moves away from the thing that is casting it. The deepest shade is where the shadow begins.

Shadows are subject to the laws of aerial perspective, and so become lighter in value and cooler in color with distance. The shadow of a cloud cast at your feet is darker than the shadow of the cloud on distant mountains. Likewise the shadow in the near foreground of a still life is a degree darker than the one farther back in the composition, though this may be almost imperceptible. Still, as the artist attempts to capture the air between near and far objects, the degree of difference in a shadow’s value may become key.

The broad penumbra of a shadow may allow deeper shadows within. For instance, think of the concentrated shadows beneath a clump of grass in the shade of a tree or the still life where dense shadows are tucked in the recesses of a folded cloth in shade.

“Shadows should always partake of the color of the bodies they conceal," da Vinci elaborated for us. Shadow colors depend on the objects that cast them and that they are cast upon.

Evening Complements, 11" x 11"

To keep your shadows colorful but believable try this recipe: Imagine the local color of the object upon which the shadow is cast, slightly darkened by the shadow and somewhat blued by the sky if outside, or by the color of the light source inside.

This recipe will work for you as you begin to paint shadows, but as with any recipe, you should flavor it so that it becomes your own. A good cook knows that the recipe is a great starting point, but it needs the personal zest or subtle variations of the chef to make it special. Do not slavishly adhere to it; add a few dashes of colors of the correct value to spice up your shadows.

Oftentimes what color to use to begin can be a difficult decision. What color is that wall or the sidewalk in shade? It might help you to settle on the color of the object in sunlight before trying to determine the color of the shadow. If the wall is pink, darken it slightly; add a little blue and you get lavender. If the wall is yellow, darken it and add blue for green. White? Darker and bluer becomes light blue. You get the idea.

Remember, however, that a yellow wall does not become a green wall just because it is in shadow. You must always be sure to add a bit of the local color, in this case yellow, into the shadow area, selecting the proper value.

If you are still having trouble choosing a starting point, try standing back from the subject and simply naming one color. Walk away from the shade or a few steps off from your photograph. Name a color on the color wheel. Purple? Green? Remember that gray is not on the color wheel, nor is brown.

With distance you won’t see as many of the nuances of color and will be better able to name one simple color to use. Once you name it, run to your easel and find that color and begin there. Start with a color, then flavor it to make nuances of gray or brown, if necessary, or retain the freshness of whatever color you choose, as long as it is the correct value.

When painting interiors, the color of the light source can greatly influence the color of cast shadows. A yellow or pink spotlight casts a warm glow on the object, often resulting in warm shadow colors. Conversely, the overall luminescence of fluorescent light casts a cool light and soft, cool shadows. Neon light casts a bright glare, but generally has little power to cast shadows, leaving only a soft pool of shadow glowing with the neon color.

The strongest color is often found in the half-light areas of a painting. Where the object is flooded with light the color is bleached out, while in the dark shadows color is lost, leaving the transition areas of half-light to half-dark colorful and descriptive. These can be the most beautiful portions of your painting, telling your viewer more about the color of light and shadow than they realize.

Some people see the color of a shadow as complementary to the color of the plane on which it is cast, an idea made popular by the Impressionists. Of course, if you stare for a long time at any color you will begin to see its complement as an afterimage. This can work beautifully, but need not be a hard and fast rule. Be adventurous and try different combinations of colors to see how they work.

Closely examine the edges of shadows. Sometimes you will see a slightly warm quality there due to the afterimage, which leaves a halo of complementary color along the edge. This might suggest some great color ideas to you as an artist and result in exciting shadow colors.

Sidewalk Shadows, 12x18”

At their simplest, shadows on the ground could be described as basically cool in color because the cool blue of the sky is injected into them. Shadows on any vertical plane, such as the wall, are often somewhat warmer in color because light reflecting from the ground may bounce into them.

The idea of a recipe, therefore, is only a suggestion to help you begin. Shadows are complex and varied, and the colors used are creative decisions that every artist may choose.

Remember that shadows have no independent shapes of their own. They show the shape of the object that casts them and the shape of the object upon which they are cast. If a shadow changes direction or shape, either the ground it is crossing is causing it or it comes from the object casting it from above. It changes for a reason.

Shadows are crisp and detailed at the root and softer at the end. The farther a cast shadow travels the softer and rounder its shape becomes. The reason for this is the round shape of our sun.

This may be easier to understand if you think about sunspots, where light peeks between the leaves of a tree and is cast onto the ground. These spots will be rounder in shape the farther the sun travels before it hits the ground. The shapes of the leaves will be more apparent the closer they are to the wall. The sunspots will, conversely, appear rounded if the leaves are far away from the wall. This is because the gap where the sun shines through forms a kind of atmospheric lens that focuses the light in the shape of the sun, which is what accounts for the rounding of shadows with distance.

In fact, if you examine shadows and sunspots during an eclipse of the sun, the shapes change to mimic the sun’s shape. The next time there is an eclipse, rather than looking at the sun, pay attention to the shadows cast on the ground. It is remarkable to find crescent-shaped spots and shadows there.

Different media lend themselves nicely to different subjects. Because pastels are semi-transparent they may be lightly layered over one another to create the perfect shadow effect. You can apply a slightly darker, cooler value on your first pass to establish the location of the shadows, then lay several delicate layers of varying colors over that, adjusting to the correct value. Be sure to stroke in a fresh, light touch of the local color, such as the color of the wall.

If you resist the urge to blend, your colors will sparkle with the glow only pastels can give, though some light blending can result in soft transitions of color.

Spend time observing shadows. Look at the shadows on this page, your hands, the table behind it. Shadows are everywhere, defining the light, showing the forms of things.

Field Shadows, 9" x 12"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN -- ROCKS

2010-05-12T10:06:00.000-07:00

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal where this was originally published.)

Rocks and Oaks, 9" x 12"

The world is made of rock, the substance beneath our feet. From the top of the highest peak, across the bottom of the ocean, to the quiet expanse of the desert, rock is the underlying foundation of all. In our haste to paint our surroundings we mustn’t neglect rock, yet people seem to think that rocks are difficult to paint. Many times I’ve heard students lament that their rocks look like baked potatoes or soft ice cream. The cure for such problems lies in selecting rocks that are interesting and have sharp light and shadows on them.

Pick up a rock and hold it in your hand for a few moments. Explore the surface, searching for spots that are coarse and uneven, perhaps interrupted by bumps and holes. Now feel for the smoother areas, sliding your finger around a corner. This may be a piece of sandstone that has been smoothed to a velvety sheen by the action of a stream. It could be a piece of quartz, softly polished to a hazy white as it rolled in the surf. Perhaps it’s lava rock with uneven holes all over its surface, or a chunk of pumice so full of air pockets it floats. Your rock may have been blown by wind, sandblasted to a soft roundness or broken from a larger rock, resulting in a jagged edge. The many colors and shapes of rocks, sometimes adorned with lichen or leaves, offer a solid underpinning that stands in sharp contrast to the supple surroundings of the earth. Whether the angular facets and sharp fractures of granite or the soft rounded shapes of sandstone, the unmoving weight and unyielding hardness of rock must be made clear to your viewer.

To create believable rocks, you must study the characteristic shapes and fractures of the many differing varieties, analyzing their size and texture, fracture patterns and other distinguishing features. Becoming familiar with rocks typical of the area in which you are painting is essential. You might remember the three classifications of rock: sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic. Fashioned in layers, sedimentary rock is made when deposits of various materials are trapped and slowly compressed over time. Igneous, or “fire-formed,” rocks are created when the molten core of magma is extruded through a vent in the earth’s crust or blasted from a volcano and suddenly cooled. Metamorphic rock has been transformed by pressure, heat and water, changing the crystalline structure of the rock itself.

All rocks are shaped by pressure, temperature, erosion and friction. Most notable is the wind that blows dust and sand, smoothing and sculpting rock; the falling rain, flowing water and crashing waves that tumble and carve rock; the scorching heat and sub-zero cold that stress and crack it; and the tremendous forces of rock sliding over rock that pares it away with the ever-present pressure of the earth itself. Time and gravity move and change rocks. They’re slowly pushed up into mountains or sifted down riverbeds and gradually ground away, becoming smaller and smaller. We don’t sense this change because it happens so slowly. Rocks seem stable, constant, firm. It’s this seeming permanence that must first be communicated.

Look for the special way that rocks relate to one another, whether the rocky face of a sheer precipice or a pile of loose boulders that have tumbled together. The weight of rocks causes them to fall to the lowest point possible, often leaning into or on top of one another. Even the rocky faces of a mountainside lean together as one giant cliff, made up of many facets, most often slightly receding as they climb upward. Smaller stones are then slowly sifted into crevices or between and around boulders, creating more visually engaging complexity.

Primary to a successful painting of rocks is some compositional center of interest, perhaps a cluster of appealing shapes accented by strong light and shadow. A pile of dull rocks with dull light on them hardly inspires the artist or the viewer. Search out an interesting outcrop of rocks in your area. This may not be a dramatic scene. It could simply be some rocks in your garden or a few boulders along the road. Photograph and sketch your rocks at different times of day, returning to see how the colors and contrasts change. Note the time of day when sun and shadows are attractive. Familiarize yourself with these particular rocks, learning the intricacies of clefts and the broad swaths of uninterrupted planes.

A shadow crossing over and around a rock more clearly defines its shape as rounded or flat, bulging or smooth. Creeping into fissures and sweeping over planes, shadows often pick out broad niches, rough textures, cracks and other variations that identify these as rocks -- and not as a pile of mashed potatoes. In contrast, mashed potatoes are soft and rounded, with few distinct planes. True, there are rounded rocks, some that even resemble mashed potatoes, but it’s the job of the artist to communicate the hard, unyielding qualities of even these atypical rocks. More often you will paint those that are far more recognizably rocky rocks.

underdrawing, reclaimed Wallis, charcoal

Begin with an accurate rendering of your rocks. If you need to take on the challenge of painting rocks, spend some time looking at, photographing and drawing them. Do an underdrawing or a complete sketch on a separate piece of paper that clearly shows the various planes and details of your rocks before beginning to paint them.

If there’s one aspect that’s key to rendering rocks believably, it’s finding and identifying the planes. Locate three primary planes: dark, medium and light. Where the light strikes most strongly, assign the lightest values. Then select a medium value for the half-light areas, and mark the darkest areas of value where deep shadows occur.

Mass together these value areas into pleasing shapes, perhaps rearranging the rocks in your drawing so that the planes are more clearly indicated. There may be additional values between those you’re using, but simplifying helps distill shapes to their essence. Remember that, generally, light values seem to expand while dark values visually contract, meaning that you may design your drawing using more darks and yet retain a sense of balance.

Observe the colors in each value plane. Most often sunlight bleaches out strong colors, leaving a pale, somewhat washed-out hue. In the shade, rocks are somber and dark, usually lacking in vibrant colors. It’s in the middle tones of the half-light areas that you’ll find the most stimulating colors, depending on the rocks you observe. Think about the colors of rocks in general. Yes, most of us think of gray or beige, which are not inaccurate descriptions. Yet how interested are you in painting a pile of gray rocks? Spend time looking for rocks that have more attractive color, or, better still, challenge yourself to paint admittedly gray rocks using some exciting colors in the proper value range. For instance, in the sunlit area choose pale yellow, pink or peach. In the half-lights use a deeper gold, red or orange, and in the shaded areas use dark brown, maroon or ginger. This can result in rocks that retain their identifying characteristic color yet have spark and appeal to them.

Different rocks are different colors. Consider the great variety of colors found in marble, or the contrasts of sandstone, granite and quartz. Group together a handful of small stones and admire their differing hues, perhaps varying from pink to orange to green. Observe the translucency of one or the striations in another. Notice how they show evidence of wear, some tumbled and smooth, others broken and grainy, and how those diverse textures reflect light differently. See how the colors bounce around in the sunlight, perhaps the glow of a light-colored one feeding into the shadow of its neighbor, making a secondary color that’s a fiery mixture of the two. Studying simple stones can teach you a lot about painting rocks, which can be worthy of painting alone.

It’s best to use a common color throughout the dark, medium and light planes to identify a rock as being made up of a single material. If you select a purple for the shadowed side, be sure to include lavender in the sunlit side. You most certainly will want to layer various colors of the correct value into and over the purples, creating an exciting depth of color, but don’t neglect the identifying color in all the areas of value. Be careful not to paint a rock that’s yellow in sunlight blue on the shadow side and red in the half-light areas or it won’t look like it’s made of the same material. You may choose to contrast colors of various rocks by placing them next to one another, emphasizing the disparity of color or value. For instance, place a purple-hued rock next to one that‘s mainly yellow, or a pale one next to a dark one. To identify a common kind of rock throughout the landscape, utilize repeated colors while retaining a “mother” color, a matrix that defines all the rocks as consisting of the same basic material. For instance, to create the multiple hues found in the Painted Desert choose a mother color, perhaps light rust or dusty pink, and create the muted yellows, reds, oranges and lavenders of the various striations by lightly layering the mother color beneath or on top of all of them.

Shadows can become one of the most fascinating and mysterious portions of your rock painting. Don’t abandoning the dark crevices to a simple line of black. Instead, add deep rich tones of blue, purple or brown. Let the dark planes become lush jewel tones: opulent gold, deep violet, sumptuous maroon and extravagant blue. Darken only the very deepest cracks with an underlying touch of black to heighten the drama there.

Cold River Runoff, 10" x 24"

Standing Sentinels, 18" x 24"

Often rocks are exposed along streambeds and brooks, where the water has cut away otherwise dense foliage. Stony streams abound, though other, similar rocks may lie beneath nearby earth that has not otherwise been disturbed. In rivers the rocks are tumbled and carried along by the action of the water, carved away to show graveled outcrops, ridges and ledges. The action of the water over time has shoved them into relationships with one another, resting together in counterbalanced clusters that resist the never-ending motion. Look for the places where such relationships are clearly seen, perhaps where the boulders and stones lean into one another, surrounded by swirling water. Wet rocks can be exquisitely beautiful. Submerged rocks glisten like multicolored gems. Even rocks that are splashed by a stream show spectacular colors where they’re wet, darker in value and richer in saturation, in contrast to the slightly duller colors and paler values of the dry portions. Again, be careful to retain the overall sense of one color flavoring rocks that are both wet and dry, shifting the values and brilliance of the colors only.

Details can enhance your painting of rocks. The half-light area is generally the plane where most of the details reside. Use lines to draw the eye to a gap or fissure, texturing the surface to make it appear rocky. Don’t over-detail all the planes of the rock, which will destroy the illusion of light and shade. Remember that bright, direct sunlight washes away details in its glare, much like an underexposed photo, just as darkness does in an overexposed one.

Use soft strokes of green foliage to enhance the bold angularity of rocks. The generally warmer colors of stones contrast pleasingly with the cool colors of grasses, bushes and overhanging trees. Even in the parched desert, where rocks prevail, a touch of green refreshes and focuses the eye, pointing to an area of particular consideration.

Rock Pool, 9" x 12"

Study the distinctions of rocks while noting their similarities. Like people, rocks share common characteristics while remaining unique. Enjoy the disparity but search out those universal elements that will help you speak clearly of rocks in your paintings. Find the angular planes that identify this as a rock, distilled to three values to begin. Choose a common color, from light to dark, to create the illusion of one material in all of the value areas, while adding beauty with layers of colors and details that indicate the individual character of this stone. Keep the interest in the half-light areas, where color and detail most often reside. Stop and look at a rock in the same way you might examine a person’s face, appreciating its distinctive beauty.

ROCKY CLIFFS

Painting rock cliffs involves the same rules for painting rocks in general, but in a larger upright plane. To visualize the rules mentioned here, think of the rock faces in a canyon, such as those you find in the Grand Canyon.

As always, I recommend you do a good underdrawing in charcoal on the toned sandpaper, sorting out all the planes of the rock. Find the relationships of the cliffs, how they run into one another and change angles, how the details of light and shadow show depth.

A Place for Gold, 18" x 24"

Start with three values. Find those rocks that are darkest and be sure to get them in place, then look for the medium values, usually where the most color will reside. The lightest values may have to be implied or drawn in with a lighter pastel pencil if you are starting on a dark-colored ground. Be sure you understand where all the various planes of the rocks lie. Look for characteristic fractures, striations and places where wind has worn the rock smooth. Draw in any holes, caves or hollows using light and shadow to indicate them. Draw stains and chelation (where salts have risen to the surface) accurately in order to paint accurately. This is the part of the process where you can resolve any difficulties, simplifying anything that is too complex for you to portray.

Because cliffs are large and upright, usually they will face into or away from the sun to one degree or another. This means that you must identify the direction of the light and stay consistent throughout the painting. Remember that the angle of the sun remains the same, though various rock planes may jut into it or be deeply hidden from it. Shadows have no random shape of their own so be certain that the angles of the shadows and light explain the various rock planes to your viewer. Shadows shouldn’t be too black. Be sure to make them colorful, using a variety of dark blues, browns, reds or purples. Don’t let sunlit areas become overly chalky and whitish in color.

The cliffs may be any color, but around New Mexico we find red rock cliffs. If your cliffs are red you have a chance to use a large variety of pinks, oranges, purples and yellows, even greens and blues. If your cliffs are gray be sure to construct grays using complementary colors in your palette (red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple combinations) rather than picking up your gray pastel first. If, after layering them or using them as broken colors, you haven’t arrived at a good gray, it’s perfectly acceptable to use gray very lightly over the top, allowing some of the other colors to emerge.

Use characteristic vegetation in your painting to soften edges and contrast with the rock cliffs. Be careful not to obscure too much of the cliff with trees or other vegetation or you’ll lose the continuity of the rocks. Pay close attention to scale. Nothing destroys the illusion of depth like a strangely out-of-scale tree or bush.

To give the illusion of space in your rock cliffs you must remember the laws of aerial perspective. Blue each color slightly and lighten it as it recedes from the eye. Soften edges and diminish details in the distance, and lessen value contrast in the distance. Save the interesting details for the foreground rocks.

Sandia Sunlight, 12" x 18"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN -- FOREGROUNDS

2010-05-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

Sunstruck City, 9" x 17"

Foregrounds can present a particular problem to many painters, regardless of what is painted there. This critical area can trouble professional artists and students alike. The foreground must function to support the subject of the painting and not distract the viewer’s eye.

Nothing distracts more than a weak, disruptive composition that allows the eye to meander, fixing on nothing and going nowhere. Instead, a strong foreground will lead clearly and succinctly to the focus of the painting, with enough detail to enhance that subject. A weak foreground can destroy the effectiveness of a painting that is otherwise successful. No matter how strong or visually delightful the center of interest, if attractive elements in the ground plane lead the eye away from it, the painting becomes disjointed and uninteresting. If, on the other hand, the ground plane is a bland sea of useless, rambling details, or is so devoid of information as to be visually boring, this area simply fails to do its job.

The fore is often the place where distractions occur. Because the greatest color, contrast and detail reside at your feet, it is necessary to walk a fine line between enough and too much if your center of interest does not reside there. Excessive detail can overburden the senses, heightened darks and lights may attract unwanted attention and strong color might appeal to the eye when it is not meant to be the center of interest. The solution is to take into consideration this key area and arrange the various components in the fore to direct the viewer’s eye, moving it quickly or slowing it momentarily, or perhaps allowing it to rest briefly in an area of quiet calm before moving on. The rhythm and syncopation of this movement is important and allows you to vary the tempo, pace and direction the eye moves.

Think about how you can use the fore to guide the viewer’s attention to the focal area (it may not be just a focal point but a grouping of items) and keep it comfortably centered there. Allow your viewer to arrive at the focal area, providing a visual pathway of some sort. This might be as simple as a trail of light that leads the eye through the foreground, or it could be as obvious as a paved highway with a yellow stripe curving across the land, pointing like an arrow to the center of interest.

It is sometimes tempting to minimize any foreground, cropping the image so that the offending or difficult part is simply cut out. This can often leave the subject sitting directly on the “windowsill” of the painting with no room to travel visually to the subject. While cropping might seem a simple solution, it actually contains pitfalls of its own since the need for excellent composition is often then increased. Instead of cutting out the offending portion, consider utilizing the space to strengthen the painting. The abrupt quality of the painting that is merely a subject and background, with no intervening sense of space, can be confusing. While this composition may be effective and interesting when done by a master painter, it’s not a solution you can rely on for every painting.

Far more often you want to use shapes to give mood and movement to the work, making the foreground a vitally important and motivating part of the composition, an appealing and lively portion that does not distract. Compose with two key ideas in mind: Create depth and keep the movement operative.

There are many elements you can include in the foreground plane to create distance and movement. Consider including a vertical element such as a tree or bush, telephone pole or fence to enhance the illusion of distance. When a vertical object protrudes into the more distant planes above, it functions much like a puzzle piece, locking the composition together in relation to the foreground.

Indigo Mesa, 12x9”

A streak of light and the shadow it casts can draw the eye and change the direction it moves. Overlapping grasses and bushes, large and small, can make a soft transition. Strongly contrasting colors or values, such as a patch of snow or brightly colored flowers, can entice the viewer. A change in plane where the ground rises or falls away can move the eye swiftly or slowly in another direction. Lost and found edges become important in pointing the eye, making a soft or abrupt shift.

Strong verticals create upward or downward movement and horizontals move the eye side to side, while angles can provide transitions between them. The place where these directional elements intersect can be critical. Pay close attention to the X or Y where they meet and maintain the movement in the proper direction.

Be sure to use patterning. Look for the repeated overlapping colors and characteristic shapes found on the ground, such as low-growing grasses, small bushes, flowers, weeds and dirt.

Rather than laboring to paint every detail of grass and leaf, use repeated patterns that are somewhat larger in the immediate fore and become progressively smaller. In the distance these strokes, laid down like tweed cloth with dashes of characteristic color, create a simple texture with muted color that explains enough without saying too much. Oftentimes patterning is the key to solving foreground dilemmas simply because it creates an illusion or suggestion of detail without becoming disruptive.

Keep in mind that the slight graying or bluing of aerial perspective is needed to add to the illusion of depth. The colors in the immediate foreground will be the most saturated, yet there will be times when you must mute them slightly so that they do not compete too much with your focal point.

Conversely, injecting strong color into the foreground can enhance perspective. Remember that as colors recede from the eye there is a color shift as increasing layers of air filter out first yellow and then red. This means that as you look out over a large field those grasses at your feet will have all of the combinations of red, yellow and blue in them, as well as holding the strongest contrasts of dark and light. As the grasses recede into the mid-distance they will first become somewhat less yellow, leaving mixtures of red and blue, resulting in a lavender hue. If the field is large enough, red will slowly be filtered out in the great distance, leaving a pale blueness to the grasses farthest away. (See CHAPTER FIVE -- AERIAL PERSPECITVE)

In fact, at its simplest, the landscape could be expressed according to the rules of aerial perspective as the yellow of the foreground, the lavender of the mountains and the blue of the sky. This formula actually works quite well to express minimally the land and sky.

La Madera, 9x12”

A few ways to break up a foreground include:

• a fence line

• a vertical bush or tree

• overlapping grasses and bushes

• a change in plane

• rocks

• shadows

• a streak of light

• contrasting colors or values

• a reflection in a puddle

• patches of snow

• a road or pathway

• a river or stream

• other interesting shapes or colors

• many other devices

Don't let your foreground be so empty that it looks unresolved. Suggest things, even if you don’t describe them. Don’t be unwilling to add elements to the foreground to move the eye, recomposing to strengthen the painting.

Rim Light, 12x18”

CHAPTER TWELVE – FOLIAGE

2010-04-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal where this was originally published.)

At Rest, 12" x 9"

The drape of leaves, like the folds of fabric covering a model, is dependent on the form beneath. Unlike the hard skeleton, foliage is gentle and flowing, wrapped over and around the structure of a tree. We’ve analyzed the trunk and branches of the tree and now we need to spend time looking at the leaves clothing the tree in softness and color.

Foliage can be seductive, often tempting the artist to over-detail each leaf in an effort to describe the complexity found there. Painting foliage should be like writing poetry, a simple, spare means of describing the details of the mass of leaves, one that evokes the soft resonance of the wind stirring the tree to life. The Japanese poetry called haiku might be the best model to use, a simple and stylized impression that’s brief but powerful, rather than a novel that laboriously describes each detail.

Instead of painting every leaf, find a stroke you can use to suggest the overall effect of the leaves. This might be a quick squiggle that hops and jumps over the paper, a slanting, repetitive stroke, or a random scribble that, when repeated, becomes a pleasing mass. Painting every single, meticulous, little leaf can be a dull activity for artist and viewer alike.

Use texture and color to indicate fine points in the mass of the tree. Instead of detailing the entire canopy, find particular places where you can use a detailed stroke to indicate the shape and pattern of the leaves. Think of the general shape of the leaves, long and thin ones on a willow, round and compact ones on a cottonwood, and develop a stroke that mimics the leaf shape well but does not require each leaf to be painted. Use this detailed stroke at the edge of the foliage against the clear sky, where a dark mass of foliage meets a lighter one, or where there’s a dramatic color change. These are the areas of interest that indicate the amount and type of leaves.

SKETCHING

Begin by sketching in the tree as one whole shape, a simplified geometric outline of a triangle, circle or oval. A pine might be a triangle, while an oak is an oval or circle. Find the outside edges of the entire tree, even if it’s off the top or sides of the paper, and make light marks that encompass it from top to bottom and side to side. This will help you keep from making the tree duck down, as if the top of the paper is a low ceiling, as well as helping you find the correct scale of it in relation to other objects in the painting.

Now sketch in the outline of the overall balloon of the foliage, as separate from the trunk. This time avoid a perfectly geometric shape. Instead find the rhythm of the tree, where it leans or bends, where gaps occur. Look for the gesture of the tree, as it leans in the wind or reaches tall and straight to the sky

The close-up at right shows the many colors used beneath the green foliage, as well as the detailed edge strokes of dark and light suggesting leaves.

Now locate the various branches and the large clusters of leaves they support, as defined by the light and shadow on them. If there’s a major branch, it will bear a major cluster of leaves. Likewise, if there’s a balloon of foliage it must have a branch from which it sprouts. Don’t leave one without the other. Remember that the smallest branches, numerous tiny twigs that each has a small bouquet of leaves, mass together to hold the foliage. Most of the time you won’t see these little branches amid the mass, except where they occasionally project, adding a variety of texture. Often a cluster of foliage will fall in front of large branches and obscure them, but it’s best to know where these branches occur, whether or not you see them clearly when finished. Usually there’s some evidence of them peeking between the leaves, as well as above or below the mass. Smaller branches weaving through the leaves can move the eye, enhancing the sense of three dimensions.

PAINTING FOLIAGE

Although there are many ways to approach painting foliage, one way is to lightly paint in a layer of color all over using a medium value, and then divide that up into the smaller foliage balloons. An open stroke, using the flat side of the pastel stick, is particularly good for this part of the painting. After establishing the overall tone of the tree, whether it’s green, yellow, or any other color, use a warmer, slightly lighter color for the areas in light and a cooler, darker color for those in shade. This light and shadow should show which foliage balloon rests in front and which is behind.

Negative shapes are an important consideration in painting a tree. Sky holes can be particularly beautiful, allowing a peek at the clouds, sky or land behind the tree, adding contrast and sparkle to the mass of foliage. Look for the syncopated rhythms of these holes, where clusters of leaves divide and light shines through. Design the movement of the eye through the trees using these breaks.

Green is a color that seems to perplex some artists. You may find you have a vast collection of green pastels that you’ve gathered in an effort to find the ‘right’ green. If you need to solve the green dilemma, try using warm colors beneath and amid the green. Dash in some orange or add a stippling of purple, red or ochre. The use of complements and near-complements jazzes up the color, exciting the visual receptors in the eye and relieving the sameness of green.

FOCAL AREA AND BACKGROUND TREES

Consider how warm, light colors appear to advance and cool, dark colors seem to recede. Use this principle to give the tree depth. As you paint your tree, establish a focal area, often using warm, light colors. Contrast that with an area in shadow behind it where you can layer cool colors, creating a visual tension that further enhances the focus. Be sure to include other foliage that overlaps, dark over light and light over dark, though to some slightly lesser degree.

Also consider the fact that inside the dense foliage of a tree there’s very little light. Look for dark shadows cast in the center of a tree and the light outside on the foliage. Different varieties of trees show this to varying degrees, some more open and light while others are dense and dark. Analyze the tree you’re painting with this in mind.

Remember that intense colors attract the viewer’s eye, pulling them visually to this area. Often this, coupled with an area of high contrast, will be the place where the eye goes first. You must then move the eye through the tree, often in a vaguely circular or oval pattern, enhanced by a detailed edge. Conversely, you can create a sense of distance by diminishing contrast, detail, edges and intensity. In a very large grove of trees, the farthest ones will be quieter, less intense and detailed, while the nearer trees will have a clarity and brightness that plainly establishes them as standing in front.

Patterns are useful in suggesting trees at a distance. Repeat the characteristic overall shape of the trees, whether tall and thin, triangular or rounded, and use muted light and shadow to indicate a tree-covered hillside or distant grove. Overlap near shapes over far ones and use accurate scale to improve the sense of depth. Remember, however, that patterns can also work against you, becoming lifeless and boring. Avoid unconscious patterns that make your painting dull, with no sparkle of life. The distant hillside has a supporting role but should not become flat and tiresome in its sameness. Work to achieve an interesting quietness that enhances the focal area of your painting in a strong way, but isn’t jumbled and distracting.

When you’re painting a grove of trees, be sure to vary the values, as well as the sizes and shapes of the trees, while allowing for repetition in trees of the same species. Don’t let every tree lean in the same direction unless it’s a characteristic of strong wind, such as the famous trees at Torrey Pines in California. Even then, don’t repeat the same forms over and over. Vary the shape as well as the texture of trees standing in a group, to some degree.

The old growth forests have developed a canopy of foliage that virtually blocks out sunlight beneath the trees, leaving a floor of mossy mulch and ferns that grow well in shade. When painting this kind of forest look for the deep shade of the floor and the brilliant contrast of sunlight in foliage above.

FLOWERING TREES

Flowering trees take on a soft, floating quality, newly dressed in a lacy veil of petals and soft, young leaves. The value of the tree is generally lightened when it flowers, often pastel pink or dazzling variations on white. This gives an opportunity to stretch your range of colors as you layer a great variety of them together to form the clouds of flowers on various branches. Look for a softer stroke that can indicate the petals, usually one that’s lazier and not as vigorous as that used for leaves alone.

Don’t forget that flowers adopt the habit, as do leaves, of growing in a spiraling pattern around each branch. You’ll notice that there’s a bit more contrast in a flowering tree, usually due to the darkened color of the branches in springtime growth, which are more apparent throughout the tree. Because flowers aren’t as dense as leaves, there isn’t as much shade in the interior of the flowering tree. Paint these springtime blossoms with a light, quick stroke to achieve the fluttering quality of the breeze moving them. Scatter petals across the ground, as well, where the wind deposits them.

Springtime Reds, 18" x 12”

FALL TREES

In the fall trees turn an amazing variety of colors, from blazing orange, red and yellow-gold to russet, ochre, and greenish-yellow, all the way to deep purplish-red. This is the time when you can devote your paintings to color, but be careful not to heighten the color of all the trees and miss the subtleties that let the colors resonate. Contrast bright colors with quiet colors, allowing the light to pick out one tree or a small grove standing against more muted, distant ones.

Fall Tree, 12" x 9"

All of the general rules for trees apply in the autumn, with a slight shift toward a lighter value in some cases, such as aspens. Trees that were medium in hue when they were clothed in green might change to a medium-light value when wearing yellow leaves, although at various times there can be blend of green and yellow that necessitates only a slight value shift.

It may be a good idea to use a colored filter to compare the values of the tree standing in nature, the photograph if you’re using one, and your painting. Use a blue filter if your trees are red, since a red filter will make red appear white, or a red one if the trees are green or yellow. The filter allows you to analyze the values in context with the rest of the painting so that you can clearly see how light or dark different parts of the tree are.

Your autumn painting might include trees that are beginning to lose their leaves, opening up the foliage and allowing more gaps where the braches and sky shows through. This can make for an exciting effect as the contrast in value and intensity between the fall leaves and the sky is quite beautiful. Remember to include fallen leaves on the ground, which are usually more muted in color and value because they have lost their vibrancy.

PINE TREES

Santa Fe Pine, 12" x 9”
Pine trees come in many varieties, from blue spruce to piñon to towering ponderosa pines, but all share some common traits. The general value of pine trees is medium-dark to dark, depending on the light source and the time of day. Shade the green of pines with a drift of orange in the sunlight and a hint of purple in the shadows, to excite the green. Pines usually grow well only at certain altitudes, so you find one type predominating in most areas, though there can be a mix of one or two varieties, as well. Pines generally don’t have an open growth pattern but are dense and closed, except at the very outside edges. A few pines tend to grow in a slightly more open pattern, especially long-needled ones. The classic ‘Christmas tree’ shape, a wide-based triangle, is characteristic of only a few pines. Most tend to have a much more cylindrical shape and taper only slightly at the crown of the tree. Analyze the overall shape before painting a pine tree and throw out any preconceived ideas you have.

Mastering the art of painting trees is necessary for the landscape painter and requires time spent observing them and time at the easel painting. One of the advantages of painting trees is that at different times of the day and in different seasons the same tree can take on such different characteristics, giving you a great diversity of subject matter in one place. When you’ve found a tree you admire, spend time studying it. Do you particularly enjoy the shape of the tree, the gesture of the trunk, the pattern of the branches, the shadows it casts in a certain light? Does the fall color excite you? Or is it the lacy dress of flowers on it in the springtime? Whatever it is about the tree that attracts you, return to it to practice seeing and recording its beauty.

Find your own voice, the poetry that describes the boldness or delicacy of the tree, spoken as only you can say it, and use it to describe the diversity and beauty in your rendering of trees.

Los Poblanos Autumn, 12" x 9"

San Carlos, 12" x 12"

CHAPTER ELEVEN -- TREES

2010-04-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

(Thanks to The Pastel Journal, where this chapter was originally published, with additional information included here.)

Springtime Shade, 11" x 17"

Think back to when you were in first grade. Do you remember the landscape you made up, the one with the tree standing next to the house with the sun and cloud behind it? Your tree may have been a lollipop shape with a wavy edge or it could have had apples on it. Maybe it was the traditional Christmas tree shape, a large serrated triangle with a little square protruding from the bottom. That tree you remember is the shortcut you settled on a long time ago, the symbol for tree that you’ve had stored in your brain ever since. Maybe you’ve caught yourself using that symbol, or a version of it, when you paint a tree. It might pop out when you haven’t planned well and decided to add a tree to a painting. Your first grade tree, or an adult adaptation of it, that’s slightly more sophisticated but still fairly simple and symbolic, looks childish and oversimplified. This becomes a problem when you find yourself relying solely on the symbol. When you haven’t spent time studying trees, looking closely at the trunk and branches, foliage and bark, blossoms and fruit, you may too easily slip back to that elementary representation of a tree.

Trees come in an immense variety of shapes, sizes, colors and patterns. It’s difficult to know how to paint every kind of tree but as an artist you should develop a working knowledge of the general characteristics of trees so that you’re able to paint any you observe. You should study trees that are common to your area so that as you paint the landscape you can easily portray them, whether they’re to be the stars of the show or only appear in a supporting role.

The Light, 23" x 17"

First you must understand the anatomy of a tree in order to paint it properly. Just as a portrait painter must have knowledge of the bone structure underlying the face, you must understand the skeletal underpinnings of the tree. Think of the trunk and branches as the skeleton, the bones that frame the tree, on which the decorative clothing of the foliage is hung. Study deciduous trees in winter when the cold has removed the distracting cover of leaves, much the way the artist must paint the unclothed figure in order to come to understand the anatomy beneath the clothing. This way you can clearly see how the trunks relate to one another and how the branches spiral out in a loosely radial pattern along each trunk.

If you were able to look down on a tree from the top you’d notice this pattern repeated over and over, in the habit of trunks, branches, leaves, and blossoms. In order to picture this design, think of the barber pole where the spiral rises continuously. A tree rarely puts out branches at even and opposite intervals along the barber pole. One of the reasons an artificial Christmas tree looks fake is the intervals are too exact, with a branch sprouting out at perfectly opposing and predictable distances, unlike the real thing. On a real tree, the larger branches develop smaller branches in a roughly radial spiral pattern, as the tree grows taller. Leaves, buds and blossoms grow correspondingly. This corkscrew arrangement generally holds true for all trees from oak to pine, weeping willow to palm, with some obvious variations on the theme.

You can use this knowledge to your advantage in painting any tree. It’s one of the methods used to portray a three-dimensional tree instead of the flat, cutout shape of your first grade tree. Find branches that come toward you and go away, as well as those that grow side-to-side. Look for the balance, as branches shoot off one way and then, slightly higher up, in the other direction. Your first grade tree was probably fairly symmetrical and straight, drawn in a childish scrawl yet balanced and proportional. Now look for the way the tree leans and balances itself, how it puts out a root to hold itself upright or shoots a branch one way and then the other to maintain its equilibrium. This is often like a ballet, hard work that looks delicate and easy.

Remember that trees must be balanced to remain upright, although their tenacity is amazing. Once the root system is well established a tree can remain upright even when part of it is severely damaged. A lightning strike can destroy as much as half the tree and yet it can live on in its injured state because each trunk achieves a certain balance on its own. In the arid southwest near my home you can sometimes see a tree that’s growing along an arroyo, the bank of which has eroded away and left the tree growing horizontally out of the wall. The tree has righted itself and grows up toward the light with a 45 degree bend in the trunk. All of the other branches have arranged themselves to balance the tree in its upright growth.

Trees are competitive, though in slow motion, of course. Like any green plant, they need light to grow and survive. A mature stand of trees has fought the battle and each has established its little domain of available sunlight. Small trees may spring up in the shade of a larger one but won’t survive long for lack of sunlight. All of the branches on a tree need a certain amount of sunlight to thrive and the radial arrangement of branches, as well as the tapering habit of most trees, allows sunlight to reach all of the leaves. Branches inside a shade tree that don’t receive adequate light will die and eventually fall, so be sure to study the layout of branch and leaf patterns.

Blanco Grove, 11" x 23"

A mature grove of trees tends to interlace the finest branches at the outside edge of the foliage only, almost as if they’re at arm’s length. Younger stands may yet be battling for the light and can be more intertwined and closely related to one another, depending on the variety of tree. Sometimes these groves develop at the same rate, especially when there has been a fire and the seedlings have germinated simultaneously afterwards, in which case the trees may remain intertwined for life. When one is taken away, the remaining trees show evidence of the interrelationship that’s now gone, as they’re left bent and oddly balanced. Slowly the gap will become filled with foliage from neighboring trees that straighten up or lean into the breach, always maintaining their balance.

TREE STUDIES

In order to become adept at painting trees, choose one tree to study closely. Spend time looking at the whole tree, its growth pattern and habits. To become acquainted with the tree you might resolve to draw part of it every day for some length of time, perhaps a particular branch, then the trunk and bark, then the blossoms or leaves. Observe your tree at different times of the day and in different seasons, recording the changes. This intimacy with one tree can enhance your perception of all trees as you begin to learn the habits and patterns of trees in general and is a sure cure for the artist who suffers from ‘elementary tree syndrome.’

Tree Study, 9" x 12"

Consider the roots. Although they’re hidden, remember that beneath the ground this structure of roots is vital to hold the tree in place through all but the fiercest of storms. Roots normally grow outward to about three times the spread of the branches and anchor the tree in the soil as they penetrate the earth in search of water and mineral nutrients. In some varieties you can see the larger twisted roots at the base of the tree as they travel along the surface for a distance before delving deep. As you paint your tree remember what is underground supporting the tree, in order to avoid making your tree look like a bottle sitting on a shelf or a lollipop stuck in the ground in a pretend world.

Now explore the trunk of the tree. Try to capture the gesture of the trunk as it emerges from the ground, preferably as it leans into the picture plane. Does it twist or bow? Is it round or oval? Does it bulge or rise quickly, perpendicular to the ground? There may be two or three major trunks in an established tree, each growing in a slightly different direction, related but separate from one another. Avoid making the trunks perfectly straight or parallel to one another. Don’t fall back on that lollipop stick, straight and tall. Instead, vary the directions of the trunks to divide the space in an interesting fashion. Notice that the angle created by the spaces between trunks is wider than the angles of the branches above. The trunk is holding a tremendous amount of weight, which causes the larger gap, so look for its strength and suppleness.

Take a close look at the bark of your tree. Is it craggy and gnarled, flat and smooth, crumbled and peeling, or some variation of these? Bark is a characteristic that identifies different species as surely as do the leaves. The bark is the tree's protection from the outside world, its skin. Young trees, and the younger branches on any tree, have smoother bark, so look for the smooth suppleness of the outer branches. The loosely organized ridges and fractures of bark, running in roughly vertical stripes up and down the length of the trunk and branches, can indicate to your viewer the direction the limbs move in space. To illustrate this idea, pull your sleeve down over your hand and grasp it firmly. Now twist and bend your arm and notice how the ‘bark’ shows the movement. Paint with this in mind.

Winter Juniper, 17" x 11"

As a child you colored the bark brown or gray but now you should look for the many color variations you can use to create a more interesting effect. Instead of using gray, layer complementary colors on top of one another or arrange them side by side to create a visual blending that suggests a lively gray. Instead of using brown, do the same with tertiary colors, putting together orange-green-purple, red-blue-yellow, or some interesting variation on this idea.

Shadows help show the shape of the trunk and branches and what directions they move in space. Where they cross the bark they can create a fascinating interplay of colors. The bark will be slightly darker and cooler in color in the shaded area, creating an interesting relationship to colors in the light. Technically you may approach shadows by feathering a light layer of soft charcoal or dark blue pastel pencil over the bark colors you’ve laid down, which darkens and blends the pastel slightly. Or you might reserve the shadow areas for entirely different colors, darker and slightly bluer, to contrast with the bark colors. There may be places where darkness creeps along the edge of a crevice in the bark as the light catches the rough edge of it. Touches such as these can make bark one of the most interesting parts of the painting.

Remember that branches grow thicker at the base and slimmer at the tips. Avoid ‘thigh’ shapes, thin, thick, thin, which can distract your viewer unless you’re focusing on painting a misshapen burl. One of the pleasing characteristics of trees can be the lithe growth, their lightness and airiness, almost as if they’re standing on tiptoe.

Evening Stand, 9" x 12"

Strive to make a three-dimensional tree, one that has depth as well as width and height. Some branches come toward you, while others lean away. If a branch is headed directly at the viewer it will be severely foreshortened or appear to be a mere spot, and can be somewhat difficult to see unless branches protrude from the sides in varying directions. A branch that’s moving backwards will be in perspective and the converging lines of bark can help achieve this illusion, as well as the lightening effect of distance. You can also indicate the depth of the tree by carefully rendering the light and shade on each branch, which will help to show its direction. Try not to make any branch perfectly cylindrical or it will look like a stovepipe. Branches have gesture and flow to them, much like arms or legs. Avoid ruler-straight lines that make your tree look stilted and unreal, back to the lollipop shape again. At the top the tree supports a multitude of small branches that hold the leaves, forming the canopy. Paint your tree with progressively smaller branches and avoid a heavy branch at the top or outside.

Trees are radially symmetrical, meaning both halves are roughly the same. You could place a mirror at the center of the tree and see a matching image. However, try to paint your tree so that it isn’t simply made up of two identical halves but has asymmetrical qualities that make it more interesting. Broken branches or ones that have been cut off can change the balance of the tree, often making it look oddly lopsided. Be sure not to return to the boring symmetry of your first grade tree once again.

When a branch is cut off at the trunk it leaves a rounded oval scar that heals over time, though it won’t re-grow bark. Instead, the knot develops a ridged callus that protects the tree from insect invasion or decay. Look for the pale oval of healed cuts on the trunk for color variation, shadows and texture.

Unlike the lollipop tree, now your tree should be a sophisticated study of the trunk and branch patterns that shows the asymmetrical balance and the agile movement of the branches, using bark details and shadows to show movement. This tree is alive and growing, moving in the breeze, as it holds its weight of branches and leaves easily.

(Next week: Foliage.)

CHAPTER TEN -- NIGHT

2010-04-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal, where this chapter was originally published.)

Nighttime City, 17" x 23"

Evening scenes intrigue us. Darkened skies allow soft shapes and patterns to emerge from shadows as the eye is drawn to the glimmer of warm lights amid the cool colors of twilight. The night reveals only some details and allows the mind to complete the picture. The subdued light and softness of evening evoke a certain mood in a painting. “In the shadows the mysteries dwell,” mused Leonardo da Vinci. However, in painting the night, darkness is always defined by the light.

Night paintings are low-key in value and color, often with areas of brilliant light to draw the eye. The use of powerful darks -- deep but colorful -- can strengthen a painting, while areas of light allow vivid medium and light colors to punctuate the dark. The night sky is cool, and headlights or city streetlights interrupt the darkness, unless the moon rises to cast its soft glow over the landscape. A fleeting sunset lends ethereal colors to the sky as the blush of color from the setting sun lingers for a few minutes and the lights of the city begin to twinkle in the distance. Stars and clouds decorate the night sky, setting the mood for the painting. These can be especially vibrant subjects. Night offers different challenges and much beauty to the artist.

SHIFT IN CONTRAST

To paint the night it is necessary to shift the contrast of the painting into a quieter mode, allowing the darks to dominate, yet not neglecting the light areas that are the backbone of a nighttime painting. Of course, without light nothing can be seen. No matter what the subject of the painting, it is the light that we must paint.

The saying, “in the dark all cats are gray,” illustrates the problem one encounters. In the dark, the sensitive cells of our eyes become less responsive to color and we rely far more on value-related black-and-white vision. This is the reason we have trouble finding two socks of the same color in the early morning light of the bedroom, unless the choice is solely of black or white. In dim light color becomes muted and dull, intensity is subdued and all colors take on a slightly grayish cast. However, this graying and dulling of colors in the dark is what allows the intensity of light to work in a painting. The blaze of light attracts the eye and reveals the colors.

So how can we make interesting and lively paintings of the evening? First we must change the value range in the piece. Instead of relying on the usual dark, medium and light scale of a normal daytime scene when the daylight is creating many medium values throughout the painting, we use a narrower range of dark and light only. The medium values and colors become much less visible except where there is light cast on the subject. Everything in the dark stays fairly dark and only those things in the path of the light are bright in color. This higher contrast of dark and light can make a strong painting.

USING STRONG DARKS

The majority of colors used in a night painting will be dark, so begin there. Use a variety of subdued shades, layering them together to form fascinating colors that are interesting and deep.

Do not depend on black for the dark areas. Although black may be layered beneath colors to achieve the desired shade, it tends to be a cold, stark color when used alone. Vincent van Gogh once wrote about his painting titled Café Terrace, ". . . here there is a night picture without any black, nothing but beautiful blue and violet and green, and in those surroundings the lighted square is colored sulphur yellow and limey green.” As van Gogh did, use beautiful colors -- deep, dark blue, green, purple or red -- layered over black or atop another to make pleasing and vibrant darks.

Your colors need not all be cool, though most will likely contain some cool notes. Remember that your nighttime painting will utilize a lot of dark colors, so work to make them a strong portion of the piece, whether warm or cool.

Spend time outside at night observing how much color you can see. Notice the fascinating darks and how they are made distinct by light. Look for the colors you might use to make a painting -- dark and light. See how medium values exist only in well-lighted areas, and note that streetlights have a slight halo around them in the dark.

Night Street, 12" x 9"

USING STRONG LIGHT

Areas of light can occur as pinpoints in a night scene, such as streetlights or car headlights, or as a broad pane of light in the window of a house, so it is necessary to carefully compose using them. It is easy to end up with a piece that looks spotty, with points of light scattered in a disjointed way across the painting. Design with the thought of how the viewer’s eye will move through the piece.

Remember that the area where the lightest light and the darkest dark come closest together will draw the eye first and become the focal point of the piece. Sometimes in a dark painting the largest area of light will become the focal point, such as a large window where the light pours out. Be sure in either of these cases that the visual pathway formed by any other points of light compliment and reinforce this focal point, rather than draw the eye away.

Light areas in a night painting are the perfect place to use exciting colors, such as the sulphur yellow and lime green of the lighted square in van Gogh’s painting. The contrast of dark surrounding the light accentuates it, making it a special feature of your painting. Different kinds of bulbs cast light of varying hues. Incandescent bulbs are warm and yellowish, fluorescent light is generally cool and neon light is intense.

All bright lights at night have a slight halo, a softening of the edges where the light seems to hang in the air. The night air is somewhat moist and this vapor holds the light inside it. The larger the light and the wetter the night, the bigger the halo tends to be. Technically, you can achieve this effect by saving an area in the dark plane where the light will be, then laying in a medium color, perhaps a red, and blending it slightly into the surrounding darkness. Then add a layer of a medium-light color, depending on the color of the light itself, and allow the color beneath to show at the edges. A final touch of the lightest color in the center, usually very light yellow or white, simulates the brilliance of the light shining in the darkness.

THE NIGHT SKY

Theoretically the night sky, when it is without the moon, stars or clouds, is a velvety deep black. Once again, flat black is not your best choice. Try using deep purple, dark blue and black, even adding a touch of the darkest green to the mix. Starlight can add a touch of violet to the darkest sky.

Even at night the sky is still slightly lighter in value compared to the darkened land plane, though it will not be the lightest value in the painting if there is a light source showing. The evening sky appears somewhat lighter than you think, especially in the early twilight. Carefully choose the value of the night sky, using colors from the cool side of your palette.

The night sky has a cool cast to it. No matter what color you decide to use, all colors are flavored with a bluish tone. At sundown, make yellows slightly green, pinks somewhat violet and greens bluer in hue. Remember that the darkest colors are at the top of the sky, highlighted by sunlit clouds beneath or punctuated with evening stars.

Let the glow of sprawling city lights in the distance, or the radiance of the soon-to-rise moon, illuminate the sky a bit, revealing mountains, hills, houses or trees in silhouette. The radiance of a mass of city lights can brighten the night sky to almost daylight proportions. Structure this kind of painting so that darkness hangs between the buildings, allowing the lights to shine brightly.

Night Overlook, 9" x 12"

THE MOON, STARS AND CLOUDS

The moon can be a delightful addition to the night sky in your painting, though its brilliance against a velvety dark sky can be arresting. Early in its trip across the sky, the moon can appear quite large and very yellow because of the magnifying effect of the atmosphere on it as it rises. When painting this, be sure that the high contrast of the light moon and dark sky contributes to the composition without becoming distracting.

Moonlight, even when the moon itself is not included in the picture plane, can define the characteristics of the landscape, describing hillsides, trees or buildings. Contours and shapes emerge from the darkness, muted by the night, cool in color, but still describing forms. Sometimes moonlight will be reflected off of particularly light objects and cast a secondary shadow. Look for light bouncing from a white building or wall and casting a deep shadow behind the foliage next to it. In deepest dark such secondary shadows do not exist.

A starlit sky may be a velvety dark violet or may softly glow dark purple with pinpricks of light floating in it. Use soft pastels in medium-light colors for the majority of stars, reserving the lightest color for the brightest stars. Remember that the light from the stars has traveled a great distance and is not the lightest light in the painting. When painting stars it’s best to keep in mind that fewer stars add more visual impact.

Clouds can add a blush of color in a moonlit sky, sometimes iridescent as mother-of-pearl, sometimes warm or cool gray. They serve to soften the shine of the moon and lend mood to a painting. They can foil the brightness of the sky, focusing the eye on the land plane instead.

Night's Colors, 9" x 9"

SUNSET SKIES AND CITY LIGHTS

Sunset skies, when the atmosphere is alive with a blush of color for a few minutes, can add interest and sparkle to your paintings. The light level has diminished enough that the value contrast is reduced, adding the chance for city lights shining against the medium-dark colors of the land.

The darkening sky is very bright at the horizon as the sun dips below the land plane and the angle of the light is increased. The zenith of the sky may be dark enough that, even as the sun sets, there are stars beginning to sparkle overhead.

City lights in the distance can be a particularly interesting subject to paint. Observe such lights carefully, noticing how streets lined with stoplights, brake lights and headlights line up to form yellow or red streaks. Study how the sizes of the points of light indicate distance, the smaller pinpoints farther away. Look for red and white lights on the tops of hills or buildings, at the highest point. Indicate the sprawl of the city and the interruption of the hills, mountains or rivers with the pattern of lights. Include trees and other foliage amid the lights, which helps to illustrate the contours of the land. Add touches of red, green, yellow or orange from business signs, taillights and neon signs.

Night paintings can be a delightful challenge to paint. The contrast of the somber and the spectacular can be captivating, giving you endless opportunities for paintings. From city scenes to moonlit night skies, to the starry sky decorated with clouds, keep the mystery and mood of night paintings in mind and let the light define the darkness.

San Diego Fires, 9" x 12"

CHAPTER NINE -- SUNRISE, SUNSET

2010-04-07T15:15:00.000-07:00

(With thanks to The Pastel Journal, where this chapter was originally published, with additional material included here.)

The Edge, 18x24"

For decades, many an art student has been told that painting a sunset is a waste of time and talent, overused, hackneyed and stale, an exercise in the unimaginative. Yet who has not wished, at least secretly, to paint the fiery sunset over the plains or the delicate colors of a summer sunrise, inspired by its natural beauty? Artists want to share that momentary experience, to paint the exhilarating colors, yet this subject is relegated to the child who is considered too unsophisticated to know it is merely a “formula” painting.

How can we redeem a subject that has been so thoroughly rejected by jurors, professors and art critics? Perhaps we must come at it with more than the eyes of the child, ready to paint the breathtaking splendor of a new day or the glory of its finale. To meet the challenge of making a painting that is not simply a trite recipe or a reiteration of what has already been done, takes a little thought and planning, and the willingness to respond to what is there and take a few chances as you paint.

Paramount to painting a sunset sky that is not commonplace or overly romantic is the need for careful composition. Design your painting so that it has a center of interest, a reason for existing beyond being another beautiful sunset. The colors may have been spectacular, but ask yourself what particular vision you bring to this painting beside color alone.

When was the last time you tried to paint a sunset on location as it happened? Most artists rely on a photograph to paint such a fleeting moment in time. Things change quickly at that time of day and a photograph can capture the rapidly changing sky colors and cloud patterns.

However, if the last roll of photos you took of the sunset or sunrise ended up as a lot of washed out colors with hardly any contrast, you might need to increase your skill with the camera. That said, it is best not to rely on the camera entirely.

First you must record the colors in your memory. Pay close attention as you watch the fleeting changes in the light. Remind yourself that the blue of the sky was almost green at the horizon or that the shadowed clouds were a delicate lavender color. Name the colors out loud, if you can, and resolve to remember them.

Practice seeing. Try “painting” the sky in your memory, rather than simply using the photograph as a resource. As you develop this habit, looking at the photograph will increase your ability to recall the colors you actually saw while there.

You might also make some rapid line illustrations with notes on what you observe. Quickly draw out the patterns and jot things down, perhaps recording the color of the sky at the horizon and over the tops of the clouds, or the progression of colors as they move upward from the horizon. Note the color of the clouds where the sun shines through at the last moment, perhaps bright orange, salmon pink, magenta or gold. List the layers of colors you might put down, such as deep yellow gold, medium yellow orange and pale orange, to describe how you might approach painting that color. This line drawing is only to remind you of what you saw and may not mean anything to anyone else. Develop your own shorthand for what you see and use it to aid your memory.

As difficult as it might be to set up and be ready to paint on location before the sun rises or sets, color sketches made as it happens can help you see and remember details more precisely. Ask a companion to photograph the sky as you make your rapid color sketches on location so that you have line drawings, color sketches and photographs to refer to when you are ready to paint a finished work in the studio.

One thing significantly different about a sunset or sunrise is that the angle of the sun is below the clouds, rather than lighting them from above as in the daytime. This means that the bottoms of the clouds become light and colorful, while the tops are cast into shadow. This reverses the usual order of “warm on top, cool on the bottom” and sometimes casts shafts of shadow or rays of light into the clear sky. These can be very challenging to paint, but it may be worth the effort to develop a technique to depict them.

Molten Moment, 12" x 18”

Remember that clouds are composed of water droplets or ice crystals that tend to bounce the light around inside them, making them glow. Even in shadow, clouds will have some light within them, showing their volume. Don’t miss the way shadows wrap around a cloud, giving a sense of shape and showing how they overlap one another.

Often you will see a “silver lining” when the cloud is almost directly between you and the sun. This brightly lit edge will usually fool the camera’s eye into over-darkening the part of the cloud obscuring the sun, but notice how in reality soft light is held inside. However dark the cloud is in shadow, there is a sense of the light inside.

Look for places where a hint of sky comes through the cloud, giving it a cool, airy quality, as if it is somewhat insubstantial. These sky holes and sheer spots make your clouds appear to float in the sky, suggesting the billows caused by the wind. Use small touches of sky to move the viewer’s eye to your center of interest.

One caution: The destination of the painting will almost always be the ball of the sun if it is just above the horizon. Like a road or other visual pathway, the convergence of color, light, contrast and detail at the apex of the setting or rising sun is an almost unavoidable visual target. If you do not want that as your center of interest, risking the label of trite or ordinary, do not include the ball of the sun itself in the image. Let it dip below the horizon instead, as you draw the eye to another focal point.

Why is the sky red at sunset? We know that sunlight contains all colors in the spectrum. The atmosphere around our earth scatters the light, usually resulting in the short-wavelength blue of daytime skies. In the evening the sunlight travels through much thicker atmosphere as the sun drops on the horizon, allowing the longer wavelengths to be scattered by dust, smoke and other small particles in the air. The result is that first blue, green and yellow light are slowly filtered out, leaving orange and red. You will see the most spectacular sunsets during times when there are dust particles in the air, such as after a volcano has erupted or when there are water droplets scattering the colors.

The colors of the sky change accordingly, depending on the amount of daylight remaining and the location in relation to the orange-red of the setting sun. Color hangs in the sky in an arc around the setting sun, yellow nearest the sun, becoming progressively more green and blue, finally blending into the dark purple of oncoming night.

Here is your chance to use some long-neglected colors -- brilliant orange or piercing magenta -- colors you love but hardly ever pick up. You may enjoy using bright, out-of-the-tube colors that have been ignored in your palette. Lather the sky with neon green and drench the clouds in luminous yellow. Be adventurous.

Mud might result, but only if you mix widely varied temperatures together too thoroughly or over mix complementary or tertiary colors. You can keep colors fresh by using strokes that remain somewhat unmixed, so that the colors and layers remain lively and vibrant.

This does not mean that you should avoid using complementary colors. Rather the opposite -- the deep blue and brilliant orange standing side by side may be what gives the scene pizzazz. It’s the contrast of fiery red and pale green, fragile yellow and rich purple that brings expression to your painting. Only be careful to retain the authority of each color, rather than over-blending them into a frowzy, run of the mill gray.

Smoldering Moment, 11" x 22"

But there is a place for beautiful grays in your painting. Look for the way neutral colors in the clouds enhance the stunning, clear colors of the sunlight. Take care not to allow the grays to become gloomy or ordinary, which will detract from your painting. Instead, make them a subtle and interesting blend of colors in the painting, perhaps carefully layering colors to achieve a gray using a mixture of lavender, green and peach. An interesting, quiet gray can be the perfect foil for the louder colors you wish to feature.

Sunrises tend to be soft and delicate, quieter in color than a sunset. The clouds may be wispy, not yet raised up by the heat and wind of the day. Often the contrasts are muted, juxtaposing fragile, pale grays with watery pinks, yellows and blues. The sky is often a calm, agreeable blue made by layering the palest hues of turquoise and cobalt. The same spectrum of colors exists around the rising sun as those at sunset, yet they seem not to have the same fire or heat.

At sunset, when the dust of the day has scattered the light into a riot of colors, great contrasts might be seen, often incorporating deep darks where dense clouds have been formed by wind and moisture. Try using rich blues layered to create the impossible, deep green-blue-purple of a sunset sky against which colors explode.

One tool that is quite useful for manipulating clouds in pastels is called a Colour Shaper. This gadget has a rubber tip that can easily grab colors and move them around, much the way a paintbrush does. For small, delicate details, nothing beats a fresh, quick dab using the flexible tip to lift a bit of the blue of the pale sky at the horizon and place it in the midst of the dark purple clouds at the horizon, or to grab a touch of lavender-gray cloud and deposit it amid the cool, clear sky. It helps to wipe the tip on a paper towel or rag to remove colors between strokes and keep them clean.

Although the camera will almost invariably reduce the foreground to a mere blackened silhouette, do not neglect this area in your painting. The ground plane is still an integral part of the painting, even if it is darkened. It needs to be more than a black paper cutout shaped like a mountain or tree.
The setting sun often highlights the land, as well as the sky. Look for the colors of the sky cast onto the intervening landscape, as well as shadows created by the light. You can use simple shapes to make a range of darkened mountains or an intervening line of trees, using dark greens and blues, or add a blush of dark pink, deep maroon or velvety gold to a field in front of dark hills.

At sunrise the land plane is very dark before the sun actually rises over the horizon. However, though that is a dramatic moment, sunrise is not ended at that point. Spend a while studying how the land colors change from the first blush of morning to the full sun of daylight.

Take a few chances as you paint the sunrise or sunset. Often the clichéd sunset painting disappoints because the artist fails to try something new. Experiment with a different kind of paper. Try making your own surface. Paint on an outrageous color or on black paper. Turn the painting upside down and look at it as a series of shapes and colors. Reverse the colors, painting in complements first, then revert to the natural colors -- just to see if it makes your color more exciting. Paint a series of pieces from the same photograph or color sketch on several different colored backgrounds to see how the ground color affects the painting.

Have some fun. Take some risks. Try a few new things. Push yourself a little and get out of the comfortable rut that results in a formulaic painting.

Above all, compose your painting so that it is interesting and varied, not the same old approach of a flaming sky over the silhouette of a black mountain, the ball of the sun caught forever as it tops the peak. This is a stale approach to a potentially brilliant composition. Do not rely on the subject matter alone to make the painting.

Instead, make your painting technically superior. Look for a striking composition that transcends the standard “pretty picture.” There is an underlying abstraction to any painting, especially that of an early morning or late day sky. This is a time when things flow and change rapidly, allowing you to choose those parts that will enhance your composition. Judge the negative and positive shapes, analyze the contrast of colors and values, the juxtaposition of brilliant colors with grays, the movement of the eye through the elements, the contrasting textures of the land and the sky.

The childlike part of the artist longs to communicate the grandeur of the sunrise or the majesty of the sunset. The formula can be surpassed when the artist responds to the urging of simple beauty using what she knows, pushed by experimentation, resulting in originality. This is the place where creativity lives, disciplined by experience and skill, allowing the artist to express wonder artfully.

Morning Glow, 12" x 18"

CHAPTER EIGHT– CLOUDS

2010-03-31T14:51:00.000-07:00

What could be more beautiful than the elegance of delicate clouds decorating the soaring blue sky? However, too often clouds become a muddy mess or heavy, leaden blobs. Here are a few suggestions to help you find the structure of clouds and keep them light and airy, clean and bright.

CLOUD BOX
Many people look at clouds and become baffled at the complexity they see there. Think of a cloud as a box, having a top, bottom, and sides. I know this seems far-fetched, since a box appears to contrast sharply with the loose, unstructured nature of most clouds, but if you will begin with the idea that clouds have a structure such as a box it will go a long way in helping you configure clouds properly in many instances. This simple look at the underlying structure should begin to help you see that even the wispiest cloud has three-dimensional form.

Coronado Sky, 9x12"

Think of a glass plate the size of the sky, stretching overhead to the horizon. Mentally place your cloud boxes on this sheet of glass, looking upward through the glass plate. Think about how the clouds grow smaller near the horizon, overlapped by the larger, nearer clouds that float higher in the sky overhead. You see far more of the bottoms of the nearby, overhead clouds than you do of the clouds farther away that are much lower in the sky. Thus, painting the shadowed bottoms of clouds will identify their height in the sky.

COMPOSING
Have you ever noticed that clouds are never still? If not, try painting on location and you’ll soon observe their ever-changing habit. The wind blows persistently from one direction. You’ll get far more believable results when you compose clouds with this motion in mind. If you’re painting from a photograph, identify the “point of wind”, the direction from which the wind is coming. You’ll often have visual clues such as crested cloud tops, ragged flags of clouds trailing behind or swelling cloud tops showing strong updrafts. Keep this directional thrust in mind as you do a completed underdrawing of the clouds.

Because so often clouds seem amorphous and vague an underdrawing to plan shapes, planes and values is very important. Many times students become baffled at the complexity and seeming indistinction of clouds and fail to plan these elements. You simply cannot abandon the clouds to a formless set of loosely sketched lines. Instead spend time analyzing where the clouds are blowing, how they overlap, and what tones best will describe what you see.

Scent of Rain, 18x24"

VALUE

Clouds are among the lightest values in the landscape. They’re light in color and they float in the lightest plane of the painting, the sky. Remember that even the dark bases of the clouds in shadow are among the lighter values in the painting. Dark clouds are never darker than the earth values because they block the light, casting shadows that cause the earth to be darker. An overly dark cloud becomes the proverbial “lead balloon”! Think of it this way: clouds are made of water droplets and ice, through which light filters to one degree or another. No self-respecting cloud could possibly be as dark as the shadowed rock of a mountain. So keep the clouds light, even in the darkest of instances.

Don’t trust photographs for evidence of this. Often a photo will give the illusion that dark storm clouds are as dark or darker than the land plane, but further examination usually proves that it’s the fault of the camera’s habit of averaging the light. Your own observations will be far more accurate and valuable, so the next time a cloudy sky threatens, spend some time outdoors analyzing the values you see. Squint one eye and close the other and ask yourself where the darkest dark resides, and just see if it isn’t in the land plane. Remember, too, that we are not in the business of painting the exceptions we see, but applying those generalities we observe regularly.

Clouds have a special glow to them because they hold light inside. The water or ice they’re composed of tends to bounce radiance around inside, creating a delightful scattering of light. Carefully retain the light in the center of the cloud to create this special glow, rather than giving clouds only a stark white edge. This silver lining effect is only found when the cloud is directly intervening between your eye and the sun. Instead, pull light from the center of the cloud outward to the edges, while using light and shaded areas to describe thicker or thinner areas, to some degree or another.

The edge of a cloud in a clear blue sky can be etched with brilliant clarity or can be slightly grayed where cloud banks overlap. Small cloud fragments, broken off from a cloud mass and silhouetted against the sky, are often slightly darker in value and cooler in color because the sky shows through them.

Twenty minute cloud studies done on various colors, Canson paper

COLORS
What color is a cloud? White is a childishly simple description, since clouds are virtually all colors. Generally, a cloud is warm on top, because of the warm color of the sun, and cool on the bottom, which is in shadow. Don’t limit yourself to white, gray and blue, but paint clouds using a wide palette of light and medium-light colors. They will look far more realistic than mere gray accomplishes.

Remember that the Law of Diminishing Intensity (per Carlson) states that the atmosphere cools and lightens all colors but slightly darkens and dulls whites and near-whites. Clouds, which are rarely ever pure white, appear rosy-white or yellowish-white on the horizon, perhaps due in part to pollution. Paintings from the 1800s and earlier show little evidence of such yellowing, appearing to be more pale, pale rose. Clouds at the zenith of the sky can contain brilliant white, especially in contrast to the deep blue of the sky.

SIMPLE MISTAKE
Why do most beginner’s paint clouds too chalky-white? The answer lies in a simple mistake that we make when we tilt our heads upwards to look at the sky overhead. As we look straight up we see the very darkest and most brilliant blue of the sky, and the very whitest clouds. We might assume that this high contrast of deep blue and blinding white is the norm and paint clouds and sky that way, as children often do. But how often do we paint the sky directly overhead? Instead, to determine the value of your clouds, look off toward the horizon. Compare the value of the sky and clouds, noticing that as the sky lightens on its journey toward the horizon the clouds progressively darken, dulling slightly, until the values nearly need. This beginning one-third arc of the sky, after all, is most often the part we include in our paintings, not the sky immediately above us.

GRAY CLOUDS
What is it about gray skies that can make the landscape so intensely beautiful? I was recently driving along a highway on a cloudy morning when I saw the light on some nearby trees. The colors of the highway itself, along with the glowing trunks and foliage, were breathtakingly intense. I thought it odd that an everyday piece of pavement, the ordinary tree trunks and usual green foliage looked so powerful. Then I realized that part of the reason was the dominant neutral of the gray behind it all. The clouds had added moisture to the atmosphere, which also seemed to intensify the colors, making them seem somewhat more saturated, but it was that gorgeous gray that really caught my eye.

Gray is one of those mysterious, almost unexplainable colors. Most pastelists tend to grab for the color on their wide-ranging palette that they need, and we certainly have grays. Pastel sets usually come with a standard warm and cool gray, but these ‘out of the tube’ colors seem static. There are occasional grays made by various manufacturers that are interesting, but I’ve found that making my own grays provides ones that are far livelier. This requires a little more advance planning, but it’s worth the time and effort to achieve a glowing gray.

Technically gray is arrived at by mixing two complementary colors. You’ll often hear about graying a color by layering the opposite color of the same value on top, which is an effective tool. However, this graying affect of one color laid atop another is different than mixing up colors to arrive at a gray. When I lay down only two colors and try to mix a gray—colors that are opposite on the color wheel—they usually become rather drab and boring, if they end up gray at all. It takes a trained eye and a very even hand to find and use the exact opposite colors, as well as the exact same value, and exactly equal amounts of each color. This combination becomes more a dulled color than a true gray, so I’ve derived a means of creating a mixture of colors that makes a lot more interesting grays.

Let’s say you want to paint the deep, intense gray clouds I saw behind the grove of trees. You have to start somewhere and I’ve discovered that often this need to choose one color to begin with can be confounding. You simply have to ask yourself if you had to choose one color, a color that you’d find on a simple primary-secondary color wheel, what would you choose? Ask yourself if it is warm or cool, which helps you get closer to the area on the color wheel. If warm, is it more orange, red, or yellow? If cool, is it more purple, blue or green? This will be your target color.

Next you want to identify the value of your gray. How dark or light is it? You have to identify the value in relationship to all the other values around it, of course, which is why doing a charcoal underdrawing will help you. Once you have completed your value drawing you can simply hold a value finder card over the area of the gray to identify how dark it is. Then you can find your target color in the correct value. Did you decide on purple? Make some marks a piece of paper until you find a purple of that value. If it’s blue or red or green or yellow or any color doesn’t matter. Find the right value.

Once you have your target color in the proper value, you need to find two other colors of the same, or very close to the same, value. I suggest you will find layering three colors to be far more effective than using only two. You usually need to establish enough depth in the pastel on your paper to make it paintlike, which requires at least three passes with your colors, perhaps more. To that end, using your target color, locate the triad of colors on the color wheel. This means that if you have, say, a purple of the right value, you want to find an orange and a green in the same value (secondary triad). These three colors make a triangle on the color wheel. Maybe you used a red as your target color. If so, your triad, or triangle of colors, will be red, blue and yellow (primary triad). What matters is that the values remain very closely the same. One problem is that yellow just doesn’t darken very well, and the nature of cloudy skies is that they tend to be darker in value. Dark yellow tends to go towards a very ugly greenish-yellow hue, or into browns that become reddish, which makes the resulting gray rather sickly looking. As a result, I tend far more often to use the secondary triad of orange, purple and green to make animated and appealing grays.

Don’t necessarily start with your target color, but head that direction by layering the other colors in place first. For instance, place the orange and green and then the purple, heading gently toward your target color. You’ll most likely have to mix these colors using multiple layers, allowing the sticks to become almost like a stiff brush as the edge begins to blend colors into one grayish purple. You’ll find with practice that the final color layered in place, in this case the purple, is the one that determines the flavor of what you see. You can do this mixture with any color, of course, not just the primary and secondary colors, and with some practice you’ll begin to have a sense of which three colors will make the gray you’re heading for. You can also do this in any value you need, whether light pale gray, medium gray, dark moody gray or any value in between.

Why does the secondary triad work so well? I think it’s because the three colors you use end up combining all the colors from the primaries and secondaries. You end up using an entire rainbow of color, all in the same value, making your grays dynamic. Instead of flat, boring out-of-the-tube neutrals you have every color dancing together in a neutral, which in turn allows any other color used nearby to harmonize with the lively gray. This is a good part of the reason why the grimy pavement of the highway, the ordinary trunks and the plain foliage all looked quite stunning, I believe. No matter what color they were the gray contained it, allowing a marriage that highlighted each color.

PAINT A BLENDED SKY
To paint a vital and attractive sky, try finger-blending your pastels to soften colors and edges, yet keep the clouds clean and bold. While blending pastels has a reputation for making muddy colors, you can layer and blend several times and then recover the sparkling quality of pastels. This technique works well on fine, deep-grained sanded surfaces or soft, absorptive paper. Some of the deeper sandpapers can abrade fingertips, although when used carefully they render beautiful results.

Since the sky is generally the lightest value in a landscape, keep your paper tone light or medium. This will help you structure your values correctly and will keep the colors glowing. If your tone is dark you have to work too hard to blend over it, which wastes precious pastels.

Start with an underdrawing in extra soft thin vine charcoal, adding mediums and highlights with a pastel pencil. It’s fine to compose from a photograph, but don’t try to recreate it. Carefully sketch in all of the values and details as you correct compositional problems and make decisions about contrast and values. This drawing will lie beneath your painting and will be blended into your colors, so be sure that you’re happy with it before going on to the next step.

Begin your painting with the very darkest colors, which may only be medium-light in value because the tone of the sky is so light. Don’t blend yet. Lightly lay in the medium and then the light colors. Within any one area be sure to put down two or three colors of the same or similar values to keep colors lively. Remember that colors of like values will seem to melt together, lying in the same plane of the picture. When you reach the light colors, don’t use white to begin. Save the lightest lights, whether white or any other color, for the very last touches on the painting, several layers later.

To create lively and beautiful grays use complementary or tertiary colors over one another. A light layer of lavender, peach and green, in any order, will result in a subtle hue if the colors you select are close in value, as will using yellow, pink and blue. Layering green over pink, blue over orange or lavender over yellow can make lovely grayed colors. Rather than reaching for the gray pastels in your palette, begin with these color suggestions and once you’re happy with the grays you’ve mixed, layer the box grays over the top only if needed. Make two or three passes so that you have at least three layers of color all over the paper. Keep these layers loose, but be sure that you have enough pigment covering the paper to blend without revealing too much of the ground. Don’t add any details.

Now comes the magic: With your fingers or the heel of your hand, lightly blend all the pastel together. Be loose and free, moving your whole arm. If you’ve been careful to use colors of the same or similar values, the blended colors are rich and beautiful, not at all muddy. Stand back or squint to see how your sky begins to take shape on the paper.

If you see areas that need changing, use a foam house painting brush (the kind found at home stores, used to paint trim) to wipe out selected parts. Then simply re-establish your colors and blend again. The delightful part is that in places where values change you can lose the edges, achieving soft transitions along the edges and making the cloud shapes quite believable. After blending, remain open to the possibility that a somewhat muddy color might become a subtly beautiful shade if you add another layer over it and blend it in place. Don’t give up too easily!

For your second pass over the paper, begin to work back over the sky with a fresh layer of the same colors, starting with the darks (which will most likely be medium values) and working through to the lights again, correcting color if needed or adding new ones to give your sky some zing. Blend this layer just as you did the first. You can add many layers of blended color, but be careful not to overfill the grain of the paper. You’ll know you’ve gone too far if you find “dead” spots in the paper where it won’t accept any more pastel. If this happens you can wipe out with the foam brush, as described above, or use a small mask spray to place a fine layer of fixative in the immediate area and lightly work over that when it’s dry. As your skill in blending grows, you’ll learn to stop before overfilling the grain.

In the final layer, create details with the same palette of colors you used in the underpainting. Now is the time to catch the elegant edge of a translucent cloud or delicate trailing wisps of ragged gray clouds. If you’ve been wise and saved the white for last, you can create brilliance with touches of it in the appropriate areas. Your goal is to use less and less blending as you layer in details so that you actually create a three-dimensional quality in your sky and clouds, and recapture the sparkling glow of unblended pastels.

One word of warning: Blending on deep sandpaper causes sore fingertips that can even begin to bleed. If you’re new to this technique, take it easy at first. Over time you’ll know just when to stop, but in the beginning you can blend too much and not realize how much it will hurt. If your fingers are too sensitive, try blending with a Sofft sponge, plastic eraser, tissue paper, paper towel or wear a surgical glove or finger cot. Each of these will give different effects that you might like, but in my opinion nothing works better than your fingers. It’s also a good idea to wear a barrier cream to keep from absorbing anything harmful through your skin. When applying it, remember to scratch your fingernails lightly over your palm to be sure the cream is under your fingernails.

With a little practice you’ll be able to layer and blend pastel to create wonderfully soft clouds. This finger-blending technique is an easy way to catch the drama and beauty of the clouds and sky.

Soft Morning, 8.75 x 13.5" on buttercup yellow Pastelmat

CHAPTER SEVEN--THE SKY

2010-03-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

The sky is the key to the landscape. It determines the quality and quantity of the light, the color unity and the value contrast of your painting. Most landscape painters begin with the sky for these reasons.

When painting the sky, remember that it’s the lightest value in the picture. Carefully analyze the value of the sky, perhaps using a red filter. It contains the sun -- the source of the light -- and clouds, which are light in value and color.

Desert Morning, 12 x 9"

Now analyze the color. Look at the quadrant of the sky containing the sun and compare the color there to the exact opposite quadrant. Notice that it's warmer in color and slightly lighter. Ask yourself what color the other two quadrants are, as well. The sky progresses from a warmer blue to a slightly cooler color, depending on the direction you're facing.

Depending on where you live, the value of the sky may be lighter or darker than you think. Our beautiful bright blue skies in New Mexico, or any high and dry climate area, can appear to be very dark, but you shouldn’t let your blue become a gloomy color. Keep it light and airy. Conversely, in more humid, lower climes the sky may appear to be quite light in color, but you shouldn’t over-lighten it too much. Make your skies colorful, controlling the value.

Summer Heat, 9x12"

Even when we know this, we sometimes need to be reminded of it: The blue of the sky is deepest at the zenith and lightens at the horizon. This knowledge can help to create the effect of the giant blue bowl of the sky looming overhead, darkest at its highest point. The atmosphere around our planet when seen from space proves to be a fragile layer no thicker than an eggshell, speaking proportionally. The darkness of the zenith of the sky is essentially the black void of space seen through a thin blue shell of air. As we rise higher in altitude, even less of this blue atmospheric layer colors the sky, so that you see more of the darkness of space through less of the air. In arid areas the atmosphere contains less water vapor, making for clear, bright skies. In humid parts of the world the increased water vapor, which is less transparent, causes the sky to be a milky, paler blue. At lower altitudes the sky is paler in color because there’s actually more air to look through before reaching the black of space. At higher altitudes the thinner air makes for brighter, intensely blue skies. Think of the difference between the panorama you see standing on the top of a peak in the desert southwest, where the air is thin and dry, and the view from a bluff above the ocean looking out to sea. Both may be dramatic and beautiful, but high dry air gives a longer view than does thick humid air.

When painting skies around my home I like to use a mixture of blue-violet and blue-green to create the color of the sky. I’ve observed that summer skies seem to lean toward turquoise while winter skies are more violet. However, I urge you to observe for yourself and analyze whether this is true. Such a benchmark may be helpful in choosing whether to layer blues that lean a bit more toward green or violet.

Last Snow, 9x12"

As strange as it seems, the sky will appear to be not so light on a bright sunny day. The reason is that the sunlight flooding onto it raises the value of the land plane. The difference between the land and sky values is less than when clouds add highly contrasting shadows. A gray-day sky is lighter in value than a clear-day sky because the clouds catch and hold the light, much as does milk glass, making it brilliant, almost glaring, compared to the clear glass effect of a cloudless day.

CHAPTER SIX -- MOUNTAINS

2010-03-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

(Originally published in The Pastel Journal)

Massive mountains loom on the horizon, a pale purple-blue backdrop to the hills and fields before them. Although they’re still thirty miles away, the jagged peaks are vividly etched against the soft blue sky. Shadows flow across the slopes, defining the repeated folds, a ray of light picking out the blue-green of a distant hillside. Mountains define the western skyline, rising from the high plains to altitudes so high that the uppermost reaches can be decorated with snow year-round. These giants set the stage for the drama of the West.

Mountains can pose some unique challenges to the artist. Doing a complete study so that you come to better understand the unique aspects of these massive ranges allows you to resolve such issues as scale, form, value and detail. This can be done as a separate sketch or as an underdrawing.

Charcoal underdrawing

The issue of scale is often the toughest to sort out. The inexperienced artist sometimes decides that in order to show the massive mountains she should try to fill the entire picture plane with nothing else. Mountains crowd the scene, with very little sky or foreground, but become oddly dwarfed by the context, or the lack of context, of the painting. Instead of massive crags, these appear to be mere hills. This is in part because surrounding elements serve to show the grandeur of the peaks. In a framework of sky and foreground, relative scale becomes apparent. Without elements to compare to the mountains, the viewer has no grasp of their size and will often assume they’re far smaller. Including clouds above or trees and grass in front, or both, gives the viewer a comparison by which to grasp the scale.

It’s best to have a good understanding of the form of the mountains you’re painting. Form, of course, is the three-dimensionality of an item. It shows depth, as well as height and length, making a triangle into a pyramid. In the case of mountains, the ways that peaks and valleys interplay -- close and far, large and small -- as well as the light and shadow that indicate these factors, add to the form. As you lay out the composition you’ll usually begin to perceive these forms in greater detail.

It’s a good idea to think about how the mountains you’re painting were fashioned over time. In the West, tectonic forces have thrust up the mountains, and continue to do so as continental plates slowly converge and slide atop one another. This seismic shift, which creates some of the largest mountains in the world, often results in a softer slope on the side of the range where the plate has been lifted. These more gradual slopes are gentler and often covered with trees. On the opposite face of the range the edge of the plate is exposed as it has been thrust into the air, creating sheer, sharp outcrops and crumbling rock faces. This exposed edge may reveal striations in many rich and subtle hues of gold, orange, red and purple running along the course of the range. Look for those places where a particular kind and color of rock takes up farther along the chain, repeated at similar altitudes, though often angled downward from the axis of the break.

Mountains are subject to the erosion caused by wind and rain, which wears away softer types of rock, leaving harder rock exposed. The granite faces of Pike’s Peak in Colorado have outlasted surrounding rocks unable to withstand eons of erosion. Often granite can take on a particular pinkish color, giving a fiery glow to mountains such as the Sangre de Christo (Blood of Christ) range in New Mexico, named for the almost blood red color these peaks become at sunset.

Dry and Cool, 12” x 18”

Occasionally an area of the earth’s crust will be thrust up into a large dome shape but because the seismic forces are somewhat less severe the crust does not crack and split apart. This results in softer rolling ranges such as the Black Hills of South Dakota, which can include extremely colorful rock layers that remain at remarkably similar altitudes. Again, look for ridges of rock linking neighboring mountains with their stripes of color.

Sometimes as the huge blocks of the earth's crust are tilted upward or are completely turned over by tectonic shifts, they push up along a fracture line or fault, resulting in ranges such as the Sierra Nevada in California. These chains have piles of loose rock deposited at the base by the scraping motion of the movement that created them, and often have a rough, jagged line of peaks, such as those characteristic of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, or other areas where spectacular rock outcroppings occur.

When you paint recognizable mountain ranges -- those that have identifiable shapes such as the bold geometry of Half Dome or the Tetons’ toothy skyline -- it’s best to include characteristic natural elements and indigenous vegetation in the foreground. In other words, don’t put a saguaro cactus into the high regions of the Tetons, no matter how much you need a vertical element.

Often when the artist begins a detailed underdrawing of the peaks and valleys found in a mountain range she finds that she cannot tell what lies in front or behind, whether the mountainside continues to descend or begins to rise in one particular place. Rather than becoming blocked by this, unable to go on with the drawing, she must take matters into her own hands and simply decide. Unless you’re painting an extremely detailed exploration of every peak, no one but mountain climbers will argue with you. However, when you’re painting an identifiable and familiar mountain chain, be sure to conform relatively closely to the specific shapes and spacing of the crests.

South View, Placitas, 18x24”

Due to the effects of aerial perspective, certain elements begin to change as mountains recede toward the horizon. First, and most noticeable, everything becomes cooler in color and lighter in value. The intensity of warm colors fades. Detail is slowly lost, edges soften and the contrast in value diminishes. In his book Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting, written in 1929, respected art instructor John Carlson explains that as one looks sideways through the progressively thickening atmosphere it’s as though there were curtains of air hanging at regular intervals, like veils through which you see. Another way to picture this is to think of one-square-mile blocks of slightly bluish air stacked sideways and upward, filling the distance. The farther away an object is, the more blocks you must look through and the paler and bluer things become, until the most distant range of giant mountains is reduced to a mere line that’s nearly sky blue. Leonardo da Vinci, the consummate eyewitness of physical effects, noted this bluing of objects with increased distance. In the 1500s he observed that if an object “is to be five times as distant, make it five times bluer.” His advice still applies today. The only exception to this visual rule is white. In the distance white becomes slightly dull and warm, a pale pink or yellow. Distant snow isn’t the same bright white as that in the foreground. Clouds atop far peaks are somewhat yellowed by distance, enhanced by pollution. The values of all colors become paler in the distance. For instance, although you know that the mountains in the distance are made of the same rock, with the same trees, bushes and meadow grasses as those closer to you, the values appear muted and grayer. Test this by squinting your eyes so that the distracting color fades away.

When painting mountains, begin by carefully selecting the proper value for the entire mass, and then delineate the slight differences in value seen in each range, adhering closely to the original value mass unless there’s a great jump in distance. It’s very easy to fall into a little trap when painting mountains. The general value of mountains is medium-dark, which means they’re not as light as the sky or as dark as the trees, and are slightly darker than the medium-light of the ground. However, as you paint downward from the sky, you usually encounter the mountains next, and have no basis to compare values. This means that until you establish the value over the entire piece you cannot adequately decide the correct value of the mountains. They almost always seem to be too dark at first, but are easily lightened in pastels. Additionally, while we generally assign mountains a medium-dark value, this usually refers to the tree-covered lower slopes. In fact, the rocky faces of the high mountains of the west are often a medium value due to the color of the exposed rock, sheer cliff faces and the lack of trees.

No matter what the conditions, whether seen through the warm, hazy light of summer or the still clearness of a cold winter day, whether high and clear or viewed from lower altitudes, mountains form the breathtaking backdrop to so much of the western landscape. You can meet the challenge using careful observation and soon master the colors and values of the irresistibly beautiful mountains.

Silverton Summer, 9x12”

All of the paintings shown are available (subject to prior sale.)

CHAPTER FIVE -- AERIAL PERSPECTIVE

2010-03-10T14:28:00.000-08:00

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2- LANDSCAPE SUBJECTS

In the following chapters you’ll find information on how to paint various topics such as mountains, trees and skies. Included, where appropriate, you’ll find “The Rules” to quickly remind you of those things that generally work. Consider them rules of thumb to paint by, but remember, in some cases, rules can become guidelines that don’t always require hard and fast adherence.

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CHAPTER FIVE -- AERIAL PERSPECTIVE

The Rules
As one looks into the distance:

Colors become cooler.
Colors become less intense.
Detail is lost
Edges soften.
Value contrasts diminish.

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Take the time to notice the point at which, as you look out, the light of the sky seems to overwhelm everything. Blue light has a short wavelength, which is scattered as it bounces off air molecules more quickly than the longer wavelength colors red and yellow. This scattering makes the sky blue. As your distance from items increases, warm-colored objects are not as rapidly overwhelmed by the blue of the atmosphere, although they eventually lose their strength as they, too, are progressively filtered out. This is the reason businesses use red and yellow lettering on their signs; they may be spotted sooner and seen for a longer period of time, and why campers choose blue tents that visually blend into the landscape. Remember that in the foreground plane you see all of the mixtures of red, yellow and blue, while in the middle distance the blue light of the added air has begun to overwhelm yellow. This leaves all the combinations of red and blue colors until, in the greatest distance, all but blue is lacking. This is why we think of mountains as purple or blue rather than yellow.

At its most rudimentary you could reduce the landscape to three simple colors: yellow land, purple mountains and blue sky. Notice that these colors move progressively away toward blue on the spectrum. Painting a distant mountain yellow or the foreground plane blue sacrifices the sense of intervening air.

Notice how the left hand illustration seems to feel correct, while the right hand one is unbalanced and feels upside down. This is due to the “blue filter” we all have that tells us that the cooler a color is the farther away it resides.

For some reason the physical effects of aerial perspective are more easily seen in darker areas of the landscape. Often you will be able to perceive a distinct shift in color and value in the darker, tree-covered foothills. Notice how the yellow-green of trees on a nearby range becomes progressively bluer and paler on each succeeding range. Educate your eye to discern the same shift toward blue in areas of lighter values.

Faraway objects don’t have as much contrast. The farther the distance, the less distinction of dark and light you see. Notice how dark the shadows are under the tree next to your house, and how pale the shadows seem way out on the mountains. Take time to compare a shadow crossing the flanks of a distant peak to a nearby shadow. If you can, stand in a place where you see both shadows, near and far, at the same time and squint your eyes to compare the values. You’ll see that the closer shadow is darker. In fact, all the light values are slightly darker and dark values somewhat lighter in the distance. There’s less contrast.

While details can enhance mountains, be careful not to be enticed by a needless spot of interest that can destroy the illusion of distance in your painting. Sometimes a sudden shaft of sunlight will pull your eye to it, but its distance dictates that it remain subtle. Resist this attraction and strive to give a sense of space to your painting, creating air between and around each range of mountains. At your feet you can easily see sharply defined edges, but as the landscape recedes in space these become soft and indistinct. Over-detailing a distant object can destroy the illusion of air in your painting and is something that all too easily happens when the artist relies on a photograph alone.

Rim Light, 12" x 18"

Photographs can capture sharp details and edges farther than the eye can see. This means that a photo could have as much detail at the far horizon as in the foreground. In reality, as your eye wanders from object to object, certain things come into focus while others stay somewhat softer in the periphery. Look out the window, focusing on objects at various distances and, without moving your eyes, notice how the surroundings are soft and out of focus. If you paint the scene with only one area in focus it will appear to have been done strictly from a photograph. Oddly enough, this is also true if the same quality of detail is painted all over.

Sandy Wash, 9" x 12"

Moisture and particulates in the air, as well as elevation, affect the amount of detail seen. At lower altitudes the air can be heavy with humidity, obscuring even nearby details and edges. Water vapor in the air creates a slightly misty, soft view. At the other extreme, standing atop a 14,000-foot mountain can give a clear view one hundred miles into the distance. The atmosphere is thin at that altitude, with much less humidity, allowing you to see crisp details and edges farther away. In the arid Southwest, the dry air and high altitude of the llano, or high plains, results in perceptibly sharper edges for greater distances, while in coastal regions the air is literally thicker, heavy with moisture. Smoke from forest fires, an increasingly common summertime sight in the western United States, can further obscure details and edges, adding a red or yellow duskiness to the view.

You must compose your painting using the focus that will best express what you see. Too much detail in the distance and too little in the fore can result in a flat painting with little sense of depth. Select areas of emphasis to detail more highly and allow other areas of your composition to remain softer. Manage details to enhance the focal point and give the painting the needed sense of space.

Rainbow Meadow (demonstration), 17x11”

This painting illustrates the recession of color as seen in the foreground. I began with very dark paper, over which I laid down bands of color in rainbow order. I toned Wallis paper a dark warm color just nearing black, using water to set it, over which I then scumbled : (at the very bottom) yellow, above that yellow-orange, then orange, then red, red-violet, violet, blue-violet, and blue. The colors become cooler and slightly paler in value, two of the key components used to create the illusion of distance. I used patterning to paint the grasses, applying the rule of proportion (bigger in front), and the rules of aerial perspective (in the distance edges soften, contrast diminishes and detail lessens.)