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November 23, 2013 at 1:40 pm #991398
Could anyone give advice on choosing a colored ground? I cannot seem to wrap my mind around this. Warm for a warm painting? Or cool for a warm painting? Compliments? Dark or light? How do you choose?
"An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation or prisoner of success". ~Henry Matisse
November 23, 2013 at 5:47 pm #1196013Could anyone give advice on choosing a colored ground? I cannot seem to wrap my mind around this. Warm for a warm painting? Or cool for a warm painting? Compliments? Dark or light?
Yes. :rolleyes:
I think you just experiment till you like the effect. When I look at a blank sheet of light blue MiTeintes I think “ick” but my friends do portraits that it works perfectly for– The blue/orange compliment working, I think.
…For a few of my tropical beach scenes I have enjoyed a red ground, as the specks peeking thru give the image a “hot tropical” feel.
…Sometimes the golden thru tans can work great on a portrait to blend with most of the model’s skintone, then one just adds highlights and shadows.If you are going to cover your support with a thick layer of color, the ground color won’t matter, it won’t show.
I don’t think there is any one rule you have to abide by. No Art Police here (or are they lurking? )
Candace
Runs With ScissorsNovember 24, 2013 at 11:56 am #1196014Hi Blooming, that is a great question. I agree with Candace and for me it has been one trial after another for reasons of seeing how the ground interacts with the OPs colors and ultimate look I’m after for a particular scene. For instance:
Pumpkin 2013 OPS painting I did – used a gold-toned Mi-Teintes pastel paper. The pumpkin was totally covered in OPs so the paper color didn’t show through, but the background leaves were painted such that gold flecks showed nicely.
Winter on the Moors, II was on grey-toned Mi-Teintes pastel paper and was perfect with lots of grey showing throughout the painting.
Winter Night was done on light-blue toned Mi-Teintes pastel paper and was great because the overall tone I wanted for the winter scene was a bluish cast.
A few of suggestions might be:
Consider the overall look you want for your painting and what is the scene of. If it is a soft atmosphere, it’s really tough to get that with a dark or bright ground. Consider a paper that is cream, light grey, light blue.
If you want a darker atmosphere, nocturnal or foggy-dark scene then I would go with dark blue, black or brown.
If you want a sunny day then you have choices of cream, orange, gold or red. Especially for sunsets (land or ocean) – love the orange, gold or red, can really work with the colors that show through the painting, scraping back to show the ground can be so beautiful.
If you want a morning scene – you’d have warm and cools going on. So you might want compliments in this case. If the morning scene has more shadows use a warm-colored ground so it kind of peeks through the cools. If you have more sunshine, use a cool-colored ground so you have some cool popping through.
On a personal note, I really consider how that ground is going to show through because it can change the overall look of a scene. Like the red, orange and gold tones are very strong and the question would be do you want to have to fight the whole way through the painting if you only want those colors in a couple of places in the scene. And the dark grounds really do change the atmosphere of a painting – I love black paper, but in scenes that call for a darker feel to the piece.
Hope that this helps. Experimenting is what has really helped me – every painting has been a new experience when using pastel paper.
I would use the same color analysis if I was laying down an underpainting on a gessoed hardboard.
November 24, 2013 at 4:11 pm #1196008The colors of paper that I use have been by trial and error over the years. I do find that the light blue is wonderful for portrais as is the cream color.
Sometimes I use the same color paper as the color in most of the painting. I have also found that using compliments works well.I use mostly board now, which is white because of the gesso, and I always put a colored ground or underpainting on it.Pat
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November 26, 2013 at 10:05 am #1196007Thank you for your suggestions! I think my biggest obstacle in producing art is a poverty mentality. I am often afraid to experiment and “waste” good supplies, which is absolutely ridiculous because what bigger waste than to have all of these supplies and never use them! I have told myself a million times that there isn’t any such thing as wasting them if in the use I gain something, whether that is practice, knowledge, etc.
I grew up very poor and this mindset is one that I fight daily, whether it is clothing, dishes, make-up, perfume, etc. I REALLY want to start living, and creating extravagantly!
"An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation or prisoner of success". ~Henry Matisse
November 27, 2013 at 2:49 pm #1196006Thank you for your suggestions! I think my biggest obstacle in producing art is a poverty mentality. I am often afraid to experiment and “waste” good supplies, which is absolutely ridiculous because what bigger waste than to have all of these supplies and never use them! I have told myself a million times that there isn’t any such thing as wasting them if in the use I gain something, whether that is practice, knowledge, etc.
I think a lot of us are like that. A piece of brand-new not-cheap paper can be intimidating. You can always experiment with smaller pieces- say, cut a 9×12 piece into four.
Wendy C&C always welcome
Everybody likes feedback! Please remember to comment on others' threads, even if it's just a "nice work" post.
November 27, 2013 at 3:48 pm #1196015I agree with Wendy Blooming. In fact all of my 7×5 snow scenes are taken from large sheets of Mi-Teintes – I can get a whole lot off of one sheet. These are not that expensive, but the Uart still makes me nervous to use them frivolously – I know what you mean. The cheap paper doesn’t bother me as much.
Hope you go for it.
January 1, 2014 at 4:04 am #1196011I had that same problem not wanting to waste any of my supplies – doubled by not wanting to run out of a color if I have a selection of colored papers or surfaces. My solution was to cut down larger sheets and try them out with small pieces, do small works and save a piece to know when to replace the big sheet. I found out which my favorite colors were pretty fast by which ones I kept running back to replace when they came close to being used up!
I love having a wide variety of colors to work on, so I like to get all the colors available and then do small ATC or post card sized pieces on each of them to know how it handles. Black is fabulous. Working on black with light colors makes them luminous.
If I want to emphasize a certain color in a landscape, say, gold, working on that color paper will intensify it. However, working on complements like doing a russet or rust or reddish paper under a green landscape is also gorgeous. The painting just sizzles. That light blue works well under portraits but I’ve also used it under landscapes to give me a base for sky and water if I want the blues to be important.
Two colors that are extremely useful are medium grays and medium browns. Working both dark and light using the paper for the middle ground is either a good way to sketch or it looks good as a loose treatment by itself. If I do intend to cover the ground completely, it’s easier to keep my values organized on a mid value paper.
White I mostly use if I’m going to do a watercolor underpainting. Also very light colors sometimes get watercolor underpainting. Black, I’ll sometimes do a white underpainting in the brightest areas to make them pop. Medium tones I just rely on the opacity of the oil pastels.
I dislike the look of white grains in broken color most of the time – again, medium neutrals look okay but black specks are exactly the opposite, they give subtle drama and the whole painting looks like a stained glass window. It becomes luminous. OPs are so opaque it’s easy to do that.
So I’d say get an assortment, sometimes pads are cheaper than big sheets. Then cut small pieces and do some simple subjects to get a feel for what they do. These also make good trades and gifts. It doesn’t take long to paint an ATC or a post card.
Robert A. Sloan, proud member of the Oil Pastel Society
Site owner, artist and writer of http://www.explore-oil-pastels-with-robert-sloan.com
blogs: Rob's Art Lessons and Rob's Daily PaintingFebruary 3, 2014 at 2:08 am #1196017I have been doing some ratings for value on Sennelier OPs and found out that even when you cover the grains completely (no white specks) the value is affected by the color of the underlying medium. For example, opaque black #23 rated around 2.5 in my tests even with thick layer and blending to get rid of the fibers on white paper. I did not check but I bet it would rate lower when done on neutral grey, for example. I guess this is one more point to think about when selecting your medium color and value and/or whether to do an underpainting.
February 3, 2014 at 10:36 am #1196012Most of my summer landscapes are done on white paper, with some experimenting with yellow toned backgrounds but when Stonehenge came out with their new colors I ordered a selection and found out that Ice Blue was really useful for winter evening skies and snow.
This was done in colored pencil, with much of the snow untouched paper
This oil pastel has the lightest areas covered only with colorless blender to match the texture of the rest of the painting.
So as a general rule, the overall tonality of the picture is your guide, whether to contrast it or blend in is a matter of experience and preference. Don’t be scared to use your materials! It is a false economy to buy it and not use it, even if it doesn’t turn out as well as you would like.
March 16, 2014 at 8:02 pm #1196018Please, excuse my English; I do not have many occasions to practice.
Good evening!
I learned a lot from your explanations and experience. It may take me an hour to choose the paper I will be using wondering about the color and the tooth and…the price. Being new to OP, I throw away a lot of paintings and I spoil my material!
That being said, I love dark colors as ground but the ink seems to be bleeding from the paper to the OP. I use Senneliers and Holbeins. This phenomenon happens with Colourfix and Mi-teinte as well. I read a lot of posts but found nothing about that.
Any idea about what is happening? I thought I could prime the colored Mi-teinte with a clear acrylic medium. What do you think? Any other colored paper to suggest?
Thank you,
MarieMarch 17, 2014 at 9:42 am #1196016Hi Marie, I posted an answer to your other post about the paper and transparency of the oil pastels (Senneliers) that you could be using.
I use Mi-Teintes a lot and have not experienced any Paper color-bleed through. What you are experiencing could be that you are painting with transparent colors of the Sennelier brands. If so you’ll likely see the surface color show through.
Pat Isaac uses Colourfix a lot and I’ve not heard her ever mention this. Could you post a picture of a sample where this has happened on one of your paintings?
March 17, 2014 at 11:00 am #1196019Bonjour Mary,
Thank you for your answer; I replied on the other thread. The «bleeding through» phenomenon with both Mi-teinte and Colourfix is very strange.
I will try to avoid «transparent» colors according to the chart and come back to you. If it happens again, I will post a sample of it. This is very disappointing. I hope to find an easy solution because I have a LOT of Mi-teinte and a LOT of Colourfix!
I still welcome any suggestions…
Have a nice day to you all
March 17, 2014 at 11:18 am #1196009I have had bleed through on the Canson, but never on Colorfix as this paper has a cardboard backing, which prevents that. Could you send a picture of it bleeding through the color fix:
Pat
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my blog[/URL]
March 17, 2014 at 2:36 pm #1196020Hello Pat,
Nice to «talk» to you!
In fact, the problem with both papers is the ink of the colored papers coming to the surface through the oil pastel (not underneath).
For example, I used a dark blue Colourfix sheet to paint (with Senneliers) half a citrus, slices of orange and a lime in a silver bowl. The day after, the dark blue had come through the yellow, the green, etc…
The same happens with Mi-teinte (Burgundy and black so far).
I do not have a picture to submit since every failure goes right into the garbage can!
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