Ok Sooz. You asked for more demos: Or was that demons
?
Anyway -- Here's one that has been on my easel for almost 2 years. The scene is of the bell tower in Sedona's Telequepaque Mall. It's a repeat of the painting on my website which I called "The Plaza" and which was sold during an exhibit by a now defunct gallery in Sedona. Incidentally the exhibit was sponsored by Knickerbocker Artists of NY which, unfortunately, also went bankrupt a short time later. Knickerbocker Artists was an organization that had been established in NYC almost 50 years before.
Much as I did with other demos that I have posted: On 100# - 100% rag print paper, I brushed on a couple of coats of Golden's Acrylic Ground For Pastel (fine), slightly thinned with water.
I fixed a charcoal drawing and then painted a uniform pthalo blue wash in something less than a medium value. To save having to fill up the tooth with a lot of pastel in the large dark areas, I added a dark acrylic wash for the tree on the left and under the roof of the building after which I restored some tooth in those areas with more Acrylic Ground for Pastels. Also I reinforced my drawing by adding darks throughout using charcoal. Then I started finishing process with pastel.
Using a combination of blue gray pastel and charcoal I fill in more darks and skipping around also add some warm colors.
I also removed a confusing tangent or lost edge at the intersect of the edge of the roof and the belfrey. At the same time I reconstruted the shape of the bell.
With each color I add I try to also add a little of it in other parts of the painting to help tie it together where approppriate - including some of the red in the foliage on the left as a compliment to the green. This helps to provide color balance and also makes some of the shadow areas warmer. I also added some dark blue for variety in the shadow. In addition to color balance you also need temperature balance or the painting becomes boring.
Started adding some of the warm colors over the gray underpainting of shadow areas on the stucco walls, and added some cool violet pastel in area of broken sunlight and shadow filtering through the foliage.
Detail
With Carbothello pastel pencils I cleaned up the cross on top of the belfrey and also worked more detail into the carpet airing out on the bannister. I also added another layer of warm colors in the forground to help bring it forward.
Airing the Carpet
Pastel on paper
~27x21~
I still have a way to go to be satisfied but it is almost finished... I think it will be an improvement from the first version..
Here is the original version that was sold.
NOTE: The photo is a scan of a 35mm slide and is not as good as the others above.... This was taken before advent of digital cameras.
An aside:. Foster Caddell, N.A. and Master-PSA was teaching a workshop in Sedona at that time and he dropped in during the reception. He asked me how much I sold it for and when I told him he said, "Why are you giving it away!!!!!?" Talk about getting my strokes!
Linear Mode
