4.29.2011

Evening Play


Evening Play was created in preparation for the Virginia Pastel Society meeting this week. Two shades of brown ground were laid down and fixed. Next, the sky of medium blue, deep purple, and magenta were broadly painted in pastel. For this one, I sprayed it all down with isopropyl alcohol. A surprise to me, it took about two hours to dry! The pastel did not float the same way as with water, but it buried itself nicely into the sanded texture of the Pastelbord as it dried, just as it would have with a water float, so I like it as a means of pastel underpainting.

To the left, some of the pink did float to give a slight pink glow into the white triangle I'd left untouched. I accented that with creamy sunlight, extending it upward and outward. I waited until after floating to put those details in so that the overall painting would not have a chalky feel with a floated chalk-based color.

At the base, I streaked in a medium tan and a darker green to give the ground more life. The distant trees, treated just as the ground was, show several dark purples and I layered in a bit of pink glow on them.

It is difficult to paint a believable sunset, but I continue to try, as the bold colors are an enjoyable substitute to green!

Evening Play
pastel on Pastelbord
8x10

Art Prints

4.28.2011

Pastel Society of Virginia - Meeting 2

NOTE; Please look to the tab above for the latest on Pastel Society of Virginia, our shows, and membership.

~~~
This week, we had the second meeting of the Virginia Pastel Society and had our first opportunity to paint together. In advance, we had decided a number of meeting topics and first on the list was the pastel underpainting method whereby pastel is laid down on Pastelbord, then saturated with water and left to dry. The resulting painting can be merely accented, can be painted heavily, or can be sprayed/dried repeatedly.

I first saw it in a demo with Stan Sperlak, which I covered here.

Following are the works of some of the participants. Mine from both that day and the day before will be posted soon.

Roxanne used a sunset photo I took at Cape May NJ last week. In this image, her board has been sprayed with water and still has a wet area remaining. Surprisingly, we found these 8x10 to 9x12s to take less than 30 minutes to dry in the sun.


Esta's is from a dramatic sunset picture she took near her home in FL.



Roxanne's wound up very mysterious.

Unfortunately, my camera download malfunctioned and I lost the last half of my card, so I can't show off Carolyn's landscape or the other finished pieces.

Our next meeting will be on May 24 at 10am. We'll dive into some landscape, architecture, and animal portraits when we go plein air at Frying Pan Park. Rain/yucky day alternate location will be at the Sully Substation.