This pastel painting is based off an image by MustangJoe from Pixabay.
I used ArtSpectrum Colourfix Smooth in Blue Haze. My underpainting was done with willow charcoal, and I used Blue Earth, Blick, Richeson Hand-rolled and Sennelier pastel half-sticks.
This landscape was done on Pastelmat (Sand color), using soft pastels from Blue Earth, Sennelier, and Dick Blick’s Artist’s Soft Pastels. The original image was by Larisa Koshkina from Pixabay
Today I did my own landscape painting based on a photo of a sunrise I took several years ago in our backyard.
I used Clairefontaine Ingres paper, which is unsanded, and not too bad. It was a pale tan color (and part of my unsanded paper sample I purchased from Jackson’s Art a year ago.) The initial drawing was done in vine charcoal. And I kept the size to 8×6.
Today I watched a YouTube video (click here) by Karen Margulis about successful strategies for a daily painting habit. She demonstrated painting a landscape in pastel in 20 minutes and after I watched it once I decided to follow-along and try my hand at her style.
Below are step-by-step pictures of my attempt. I used a portion of my Canson Touch board in Twilight color. Karen’s painting is much superior to mine, but this was actually fun! It really did take 20 minutes. AND I feel ready to give a shot to doing a painting using one of my own photos.
The big tree really only looks like a tree from a distance, so I included a distant shot. I don’t yet have the skill Margulis has so I would want to draw out my trees a bit more. I can’t quite make the connection from abstract value shape to something I view as a tree after painting.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 