Pastels and Watercolors (and a few other art media)

[Dean_Gretsch]

How talented he is!

 

[SquarePeg19]

Amazing!

 

[terri16]

How great is that? I love the way he gets started - such a free movement, kicking a can of paint to get it up on the various walls. It looks fun!

Hears wishing him countless more walls!

 

[snowbear94]

Awesome.

No painting yesterday,, as I planned. I went to grocery store with MLW and twisted the wrong way with a case of bottled water, so I ended up laying down on the heating pad and ultimately knocked out from a muscle relaxer.

I did get an outline down on some WC paper, but haven't decided which way to go with it - pastel, paint, ink or maybe charcoal/graphite/contee.

The colors are not as vibrant in this shot - no post processing except resizing and whatever Adobe does to get from raw to a Lightroom DNG, then JPG export.

 

[terri16]

That looks like it's going to be fun!

 

[SquarePeg19]

It’s been a couple of weeks or maybe more since I painted anything smaller than a bookcase. Tonight I decided to give a couple of fall landscapes a try. This is a watercolor copy of an acrylic painting from one of those paint night places. So not an original work of mine but I did have fun figuring out how to do it with watercolor paints.

 

[SquarePeg19]

This is from a loose painting tutorial. It was too loose and the big tree trunks were overpowering. I tried to counteract that. I added the stream and more details in the distant trees. It definitely improves it from my perspective but I wish I had gone against the tutorial and not put the big trees all the way to the top of the paper. Thoughts?

 

[terri16]

I love the fall palette. Tutorials are difficult for me, because rather than taking the instruction just for the handling of the medium, I find myself slavishly following the reference. Since it never matches the reference, I usually don't really like what I end up with. Sounds like this is sort of what happened to you!

It could be that the tutorial artist was trying to avoid having to show how to finish these large trees, because that alone would be challenging. It would give a different look to the piece. Here, there's a nice horizontal line from the smaller trees in the background, without too many details. The foreground trees do act more as framing the stream, so you made it better, I agree.

You could try it again, maybe do a sketch first to give yourself a new reference, and plot how you would finish the foreground trees.

It's still a pretty scene, as is.

 

[waday]

Totally agree with @terri. I often do the same, follow the reference and having it not work (to what I wanted) in the end.

But, @SquarePeg , FWIW, when I initially looked at your picture, I saw the stream nicely framed by the big trees. If you’re saying that you added the stream as an afterthought, bravo on your choice! I think it really helps bring out the scene and it’s a nice touch.

It actually reminds me of a Bob Ross painting I recently watched. At the very end, when I thought he was done, he did his little magic and just made a path pop out of nowhere. After he added it, I couldn’t see the picture without it—it needed that path to really finish it off. I think yours is the same way. The stream is a nice little finishing touch that just rounds off the art.

 

[waday]

Not happy with this one, but it’ll do. I’m debating going back over some of the highlights with either white pastel or white paint. I’ve seen a few other people do that to really help the whites pop, and I’ve been waiting to try it. Maybe Kamala is the first one to get that treatment.

 

[SquarePeg19]

Have you considered a white gel pen? I think they’re great for highlights. I added them to the stream with one here after I took the pic above. The brand is Signo and I bought them on Amazon. They work great over watercolor.

 

[waday]

Aaahhh, yes, I’m going to try that!

 

[terri16]

@SquarePeg: I'm going to look at those pens! My medium of choice, oil pastels, are very challenging when thin lines are needed. Usually I just end up making a line, then getting a scraping tool and scraping it back. I'd much rather investigate something like this! Great idea.

@waday: Remember, you can do the opposite thing to push highlights. If you have a darker pencil, even black, a few swipes of that right next to a white area will make it pop. It can be easier to make the surrounding area darker than make a white area whiter. If that makes sense. It's like adding contrast.

 

[snowbear94]

The back is getting better after aggravating it on the road trip (sitting too long).

Another possibility is to use a (white or off-white) watercolor ground. It's apparently like liquid paper (or a photographic emulsion) that can be applied to a surface, then painted over. Of course, there's also white gouache in the WC world; not sure how well it would do with pastels.

I saw the gel pen trick used on one of the tutorial videos I saw last week (I don't recall which one), where I learned about the WC ground.

 

[snowbear94]

Well, I finally got started on the studies. This is the pastel (soft chalky, not oils). About 5-3/4" x 4-1/4" on cold press watercolor paper. I need to learn how to use pastels. I'm OK with blending (rubbing it around with a finger) and lifting (with a tissue), but I don't have a clue about adding details. I'm guessing it would be easier with a larger work, which is my goal.