I did this work entirely in NuPastels, using Canson Mi-Teintes in “Red Earth”. I actually got the idea from a post by Karen Margulis, riffing off of her underpainting in preparation for a scene of trees and grass in summer.
It was a warm Christmas Eve, quite spring-like, as I worked this, which got me thinking of gardens yet also of stained glass windows.
I was uneasy about my color selection for the little boy’s rubber boots — the part in shadow. The color constancy illusion would lead one to think the entire boot is yellow, but if you squint and then look at the photo, the boot in shadow is clearly not the same yellow as the boot in sunlight. So, at first I used a bluish-gray for the boot in shadow.
Then I remembered, I have the “Color Grab” app on my Android phone! I can check the suggested color, and then see if I have a pastel to match.
“Color Grab” showed the shadowed boot to be a yellow green, as shown in the first screen grab (see the small and larger white circles). Then you click on the Hex code for the color, and, if a listing of approximate paint colors is available, they will be listed. That display is what I used to approximate a pastel stick color.
I then added the yellow green color to the boot, but I need to blend it in.
In addition, the sunlit part of the boot is actually a whiter (paler) yellow, as shown by the screen grab, so I will need to adjust as appropriate there.
This pastel painting was based on an image by Nadine Doerlé from Pixabay.
I used one of the assorted gray shades from my pack of Canson Mi-Teintes paper (the smooth side). I used graphite for the drawing, and pastel sticks from Blue Earth, Unison, Blick, and Sennelier.
This is the first time I’ve done a pastel of a human figure.
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.
I used a Hahnemühle non-sanded pastel paper from my sampler set to draw the pair of ornaments taken from my fireplace decorations.
I took a photo of the entire easel scene; you can see the reference objects on the left. I also took a photo of the ornaments, and the color palette I used.
I was painting from life rather than the photo reference; the photo looks somewhat bluer and I was standing at a slightly different position taking the photo than when I was actually pasteling.
I watched Marla Baggetta’s YouTube video from December 2019 in which she did a pastel painting of Christmas tree ornaments. I then attempted to copy her work to get a feel for how she laid colors for each ornament.
My copied work was done on Canson Mi-Teintes (the Red Earth shade) on the “honeycomb” textured side because I messed up the initial drawing on the smooth side. The initial drawing was done using vine charcoal, and then I used the sticks shown below for color. It looks best from far away!
Next up is trying a painting using some of my own ornaments.
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
Finally got around to trying out some colors for my cranberry glass. I LOVED the paper — Sennelier Soft Pastel Card 360gsm — from my sampler set of sanded papers. I used Dick Blick Artist’s Soft pastels in 3 different rose colors, and they went down smooth as butter!
Comparing the two versions, I see i missed a few shadow spots. Oh well!
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.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 