Home Forums Explore Media Pastels Soft Pastel Learning Center ESP (explore soft pastel)–August 2004: scumble, glaze and feather

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  • #448151
    Deborah Secor
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        Last month in ESP—Exploring Soft Pastel—we looked at how to tone paper and the different appearance that various ground colors give to your paintings. This month we’ll take a closer look at three techniques you can use to achieve different effects using pastels. Some of these are a little bit different in pastels than they are in other media, so if you recognize a term take some time to think about how it’s done with pastels.

        Let’s talk about how to scumble (roughly drag one color over the top of another one), glaze (smooth a thin layer of color over an area of pastel) and feather (use a stick of charcoal or hard pastel to lightly blend colors and values together) with soft pastels.

        The definitions shown come from Merriam-Webster and Artlex[/URL]:

        SCUMBLE
        1 a : to make (as color or a painting) less brilliant by covering with a thin coat of opaque or semiopaque color b : to apply (a color) in this manner
        2 : to soften the lines or colors of (a drawing) by rubbing lightly
        There are two senses for this term. Its earlier meaning: a broken passage of opaque or translucent color (often paint) skimmed or dragged across the surface in such a way that each color is visible, each modifying the other, or, to apply a color in this way.
        A later sense for scumble: to smudge or smear the lines, edges, or colors in an image by rubbing lightly.

        Let’s start with scumbling. This technique has been described so often on the TV home shows, where decorators use the tip of a big house painting brush to dab a globby layer of paint in place, that many people are confused. Some who have worked with oils or acrylics think of it as simply scribbling with the paintbrush, and although you can use a scribbling motion in pastels it isn’t exactly the same.

        No, to scumble in pastels you first need a couple of layers of color in place, somewhat thickly laid down so that the value is already established. Then you can scumble—scribble, stroke, scrub—another color over the top, roughly and loosely applying a new layer so that you can still see the other colors coming through. It makes for lively color and strokes, with a very uncontrolled, painterly look.

        You might scumble when you want to create a mass of distant trees, or you could scumble grasses loosely into the foreground. In painting any kind of subject matter, when you want to enliven the color and keep things free, scumbling may help. It’s the antithesis of tight little strokes.


        Here you can see that I’m scumbling some lavender into the already existing greens and golds, to create a mixture that’s not covered by any one color but is a pastiche of all of them together.

        Notice how Albert Handell has scumbled together several colors in the grasses and trees of this painting:

        Sometimes scumbling is made with softly repeated strokes in one direction, or by crosshatching. In this painting you can see how I’ve scumbled each part with the repeated directional strokes, blue and purple in the mountains, peach on the road, greens in the trees, and yellow on the grasses:

        GLAZE
        3 : to give a smooth glossy surface to
        Also, a glaze can be a thin, translucent or transparent coat over a painting, sometimes meant simply to protect the paint underneath, but more often to add a veil of coloration to an area of a picture.

        Next let’s look at how to glaze. This is a little different from scumbling in that the idea is to add a soft veil of color over the top of one area of the painting in order to harmonize the colors or give an impression of light or color there.

        To do it you must establish several layers first. Then using the open, flat side of a stick of pastel softly cover the area with a wash of color. This works best if the pastel is larger in size, in most cases, as a small stick tends to create lines when it catches an end too easily. The idea is to float pastel over the top evenly and thinly.

        You can use glazing to warm or cool a larger area of the painting, or to add colors when needed. For instance, if your distant mountains are too dark, glaze them with a lighter blue. If still water needs a layer of sky color, glaze it. If the sun is drenching one part of the painting, use glazing there. Glaze the background around a figure, or the table in front of a still life.

        Here I’m using the flat side of a cool green to glaze the side of the mountain in sunlight:

        So it will look like this:

        Notice how Fred Somers has glazed the blues in over the reds in his water:

        I’ve glazed the sky with yellow:

        And Handell has glazed this sky with green:

        FEATHER

        In drawing and painting, to feather is to blend an edge so that it fades off or softens. To feather is also to overlap values and colors in the manner of the overlapping feathers of a bird.
        Stroke or ‘feather’ pastel colors into each other to draw areas of tone lightly together.

        Feathering is slightly different again. It’s used to mute and draw together an area of the painting, not adding color over it but softening and subduing color and contrasts.

        You do it by putting down several layers of color, at least three, and frequently more, so that there is a creamy pillow of pastel in place over which you’ll work. Then, using a long stick of extra soft thin vine charcoal, lightly and quickly swipe it across the pastel. You may certainly try this with other varieties of charcoal but I believe you’ll find that extra soft thing vine—not thin, not vine—but all four words, works the best. Use a fresh long stick to keep yourself from bearing down too hard and making scratchy marks in your painting. The idea is to leave a slightly gray layer over the top, leaving all the shifts in color and value that are originally there but graying them just slightly with the charcoal, thus bringing the values closer together.

        Use feathering when you want to push the distant mountains away and mass the values so that the range appears uniformly distant, or lay down a reflection in all the clarity and detail of the objects being reflected and then feather it all together to achieve the flat, muted surface of still water.

        You can see the charcoal tip as it feathers over the purple rocks behind the yellow foreground:


        The pink color was originally as bright as the yellow, so I feathered over it all with loose, fast feathery strokes to mute it all. There are now stronger lights and darks in the fore.

        Feathering has been used to mute and mass together the distant blue, green and lavender mountains without removing the colors or details:

        In this one, I have feathered all of the colors from above the yellow-green hills up to the most distant peak:

        Here I feathered the water:

        SO NOW WHAT…?
        You might want to try applying these techniques if they aren’t already familiar to you. I suggest you try doing some small sketches that you can post here for us to share. Let’s keep it simple to begin with.

        Assignment #1: Scumble

        Using this photo of an orange (or use any other photos or fruit you have for any of these), try scumbling some color into its surface, the shadow and the table. Be adventurous, using layers and scumbling a variety of colors there.

        Assignment #2: Glaze

        Try using the glazing technique to make the surface of this apple. You might scumble in the shadow area, or glaze over the background. Go ahead and try things—you can use any colors you want to!

        Assignment #3: Feather

        Just to keep with the fruit theme, try painting in some or all of these apples and feathering back the ones you don’t want to be the center of interest. You might also glaze the ones that are to take center stage, and scumble in areas like the basket, as well.

        Or use this photo to try all three! Glaze the sky, scumble the foreground, and feather back the mountains! Have fun with this one, try different things, be creative in any way that pleases you.

        I hope you’ll join me in trying these exercises. Let us see what you do, too!

        Deborah

        Deborah

        "All glory to Him, who alone is God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord."
        Landscape Painting in Pastels (free online book)
        Gouache Blog

        #491222
        pjo
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            Deborah, what a wonderful, wonderful explaination you have given to us all on scrumbling, feathering and glazing. I really can’t say enough, your generosity with your talent and time overwhelms me. I’m going to try to join in on an exercise but it will probably be after Sunday, my grandson is going back to Florida on Sunday night, (hurricane Charley permitting) and I should be able to get back to participating more. Thank you, I’m looking forward to this soooooo much!

            PJ

            "Be still and know that I am God" Ps. 46:10

            #491183
            Deborah Secor
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                Aw, thanks Paula! I hope you can join in when you have the time. This will be up for a while, so I look forward to seeing what you do!

                Deborah

                Deborah

                "All glory to Him, who alone is God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord."
                Landscape Painting in Pastels (free online book)
                Gouache Blog

                #491170
                soap
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                    I haven’t been around much to see if you did these sort of threads before but I had to post to say this is brilliant educating! I’ll rate it!

                    #491145
                    JStarr
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                        I dunno if I’ll get to any of the exercises, Deborah- I’ve already a number of projects either going or planned- but I can tell you I’m doing all three of these techniques in the piece I’m currently working on now. Marvelous explanation- and very timely for me- let’s me know I’m doing it “right”- lol. I’ll post little close-ups of the various techniques when I’m done- or at least “done-er”- right now, I need to make sure I keep it cohesive (it’s HUGE!!)

                        #491171
                        Dyin
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                            wow, Deborah…you took classroom to a whole new level! :clap: I’m jealous that you can glaze like that…i can very carefully use a finger with color on it to glaze, but it’s not as crisp as this. Great job on the explanations and good of you to take the time to do it for everyone. :)

                            Artist webpage
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                            #491184
                            Deborah Secor
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                                Thanks, Sophie–hope you get a chance to try some of the lesson too.

                                Julie, I would LOVE to see some examples from your painting. It helps us all to see how these techniques are used in ‘real life’ paintings. Please do post some, I really look forward to that–although I saw the painting and know how big it is, and how busy you are! It’s just gorgeous, by the way.

                                Glad you like it Sue–you’re my inspiration here, ya know!

                                Deborah

                                Deborah

                                "All glory to Him, who alone is God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord."
                                Landscape Painting in Pastels (free online book)
                                Gouache Blog

                                #491220
                                Khadres
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                                    Very nice presentation and definitions! I’m wondering if the same soft “rules” apply to scumbles and glazes in pastels as to oils? As I learned it with oils, a scumble was usually a lighter color lightly scuffed over a darker and a glaze was usually a thinned darker color applied over a lighter one. I think this was the rule for oils because scumbling is more likely to obscure a bit of what’s underneath while a glaze leaves the underneath visible but through a transparent veil. Guess that kinda works for pastels too!

                                    I’ll try these exercises when I get time…they look like fun! I know I’ve done some of each of these before….though unconsciously. Will be fun to intentionally check it all out. Thanks!

                                    Sooz
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                                    #491219
                                    binkie
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                                        Deborah, this is FABULOUS!!!!!!! :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: I’ve had 3 classes and had never heard of feathering and glazing.

                                        Thank you so very much for offering your help and expertise.

                                        gwen

                                        #491142

                                        Excellent teaching here, everyone should be VERY grateful indeed.

                                        I would just add one small caveat . You say that feathering is used “to mute and draw together an area of the painting, not adding color over it but softening and subduing color and contrasts.”

                                        Here in the UK, we WOULD consider feathering one way of ADDING to the colour, rather than a technique for simply muting the colour.

                                        When I use feathering, I use it as a mass of individual strokes, built up gradually, and I sometimes use this for adding richness to a colour area that seems dull or flat, particular where I might have some solid or blended areas that have filled the paper tooth and I want to bring back the liveliness of the texture.

                                        feathering can help to produce subtle changes of colour character …

                                        *by lightening, or darkening, a mid-tone that lacks contrast with surrounding colours:

                                        *by “cooling” a warm colour, or vice versa

                                        *by enlivening colours that have been deadened, by introducing light touches of a contrasting colour.

                                        I find that the essential difference between feathering, and scumbling and glazing, is that for feathering, one uses the “point” of the pastel to lay down swift little linear strokes, while both scumbling and glazing need to be done with the side of the pastel.

                                        IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not in any way meant to argue with your teaching – simply to add to it. I do hope you won’t mind, Deborah. Sometimes, we tutors have different meanings for the various technical terms, AND DO THINGS IN SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT WAYS, and it can be helpful for students to know this.

                                        I think WC-ers will find your thread incredibly useful, how lovely of you to spend so much time on this.

                                        Jackie

                                        #491173
                                        lawsportraits
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                                            This is invaluable Deborah!!!! Better than any pastel book I’ve ever bought.

                                            I had never thought of using vine charcoal! :D

                                            Thank you for giving us so much of your time.

                                            Heather :D

                                            #491165

                                            Well, dang, is that what I was doing all along? Love the upclose demos – that really demonstrates how to do it in a manner that is easy to understand. Will have to give that mountain scene a try – :clap:

                                            Hope everyone is rating this thread!

                                            #491158
                                            bnoonan
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                                                fanstastic lesson – it’s almost like being in the studio with you Deborah. (though not as hot).

                                                I’ve rated it as well. 5 stars!!!

                                                Barb :)

                                                [FONT=Palatino Linotype]Do what you love, love what you do!

                                                www.MorninNoonanNight.com

                                                #491224
                                                judwal
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                                                    Great lesson Deborah. Thanks!

                                                    [FONT=Garamond]Judy Lang My Wet Canvas Gallery
                                                    #491185
                                                    Deborah Secor
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                                                        Sooz, that’s interesting info about glazing and scumbling in oils. I don’t usually think of there being color rules for pastels that way, though oils and pastels often agree. I’ll have to analyze it! :confused: :)

                                                        Gwen, thanks. I hope my info helps us all think and try things!

                                                        Jackie, this is very interesting (and no, I would never construe this as anything but additional information!) All of it is valid and useful–and maybe I need to do a bit more experimentation! Thanks for the additional thoughts here. I’ve feathered using a pastel pencil now and then, but I use longer, sweeping strokes witht the pencil held at the very end to keep it light, just as I do with the charcoal. That certainly adds an overall touch of light color, but I’m not using the short strokes you mention. Hmmmmm… more to study!

                                                        This is one thing that I neglected to mention–when you feather, hold that long stick of extra soft thin vine charcoal so it is loosely grasped to avoid making hard lines. You can’t use a short stick to do this effectively–I find I’m not feathering at all if it’s too short of I’m choked up on the stick.

                                                        Heather, you’re more than welcome to any information I have. Try the charcoal–it really gives an interesting effect!

                                                        Barb, I tell ya, it’s cooler now–honest! Glad you like this lesson. Come by any time! ;)

                                                        Thanks, Judy. :D

                                                        I sure hope some of you give the lessons a try and show your results. Let’s see what questions develop! One of hte great strengths of WC is the visuals, don’t you think? That’s what makes this a good ‘book!

                                                        Deborah

                                                        Deborah

                                                        "All glory to Him, who alone is God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord."
                                                        Landscape Painting in Pastels (free online book)
                                                        Gouache Blog

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