Oil Pastel Classroom September 2004-Tree basics

[Pat Isaac]

Wow!! Great tree. I can’t wait to see more of your oilies and yes, they are very different from the softies. I think we all started with cheapies and moved on. This is a great start.

Pat

My Website
oil pastel society member
my blog[/URL]

[Biggles7268]

wow that was really excellent Marge

[greenpearl]

Ooh, very nice! Amazing, the difference between OPs and the soft pastels.

Monica

[cjkelly]

Great trees everyone, I’ve enjoyed watching everyone’s progress. Thanks Sue for another wonderful demo.
I will try and have a go when my new op’s turn up (soon hopefully), but this darn computer is popping up fatal exception errors and freezing with ominous regularity, so not sure how it will go.

cj

[Dyin]

hope we don’t lose you cj! look forward to seeing your tree!

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[Anne Y. H.]

OK, here it is with the oil pastels. They sure are different to work with than the soft ones. The Weber ones were too dry to work with; the Loew were OK and the artista really soft and smeary. Gotta get to a meeting now

That’s a very nice tree. Never heard of “Artista”, but some brands don’t cross the ocean.

I look forward seing more of your work,

Anne

[Biggles7268]

ARGH this is making me wish I had an actual camera LOL. This webcam seems to almost eliminate quite a few of the colors in here, not to mention the bad light not helping anything.

anyway I’ve been playing with the same tree a little bit not done, just playing around with different colors hehe

Hopefully it will stay sunny this weekend so I can walk down the valley I live in and sketch some of the trees in here.

[BeckyMc]

I’ve been working on salvaging some files from my broken Gateway all week, so haven’t been looking at WC. Glad to see you’re finally able to post Biggles, hope you like your Sennelier’s. I’ll go back and look at everyone’s work later; now I need to post this and get to work. Great job on the demo Sue and Kat.

This huge tree is from a photo that my daughter took while on a high school trip; I dug it out of some of her photos, while looking for a tree to paint. There’s a tiny little person standing at the base, probably a friend of hers – I may put her friend in later. It’s either a French, Irish or English tree, in some sort of tourist attraction, I’m sure. I’d like to surprise my daughter with this, so I plan to finish it soon. C&C welcome!

Photo is also crooked, as I’m in hurry and a lousy photographer!

Sennelier on 9 1/2 x 16 Oyster Canson

Becky

Oil Pastel Society

[Dyin]

Biggles I love that your little tree is finding a home! I like how the front branches are starting to come forward and so glad you want to tackle more trees
Becky….what a grandfather tree! Your daughter will be pleased with this…all of you do great trees…are you finding it easy to lay down the OPs this way?

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Charter Member of Silver Chord Art Guild

[Biggles7268]

That’s a gorgeous tree Becky

[greenpearl]

Becky, that’s a really lovely tree. I’m curious how big the tiny person is – I hope you’ll include him / her.

Biggles, your tree is looking positively jaunty!

Didn’t have any time for trees this week, or anything else.

Monica

[ab39z]

I was asked to give the steps I used to create the trees in my most recent post, “Ocracoke Light.” So, here goes. I’ve uploaded a “detail” crop from that piece so you can see some of what I’m talking about.

1) I always start with a pencil sketch of the exact or near-exact shape I want the tree to be. This sketch should include any spots where the trunk or branches show through the canopy and any “holes” through which the sky or other background shows.

2) I use a touch of black very lightly at the top of the visible trunk just under the canopy and on the shadow side of the trunk. I do this first so the other colors can tone down the black.

3) Next I use the darkest brown I have, which is nearly black, to expand the shadows. I go over all the black and enlarge the “colored” area slightly.

4) I use the lightest brown I have — burnt sienna, I think — to give a highlight to the side of the trunk opposite the shadow side I created with the black.

5) Now I use a middle brown to fill out the rest of the trunk. I also go over all the black and darkest brown very lightly and let the sticks blend themselves slightly.

6) I finish out the trunk with a touch of grey-green in the shadows.

7) Now it’s time to work on the canopy (the leaves). I start by outlining the entire canopy area with a darkish medium green with a very heavy line. I also outline the “holes.”

8) Now you can lightly cover the canopy with a medium green if you want to limit the amount of paper color that shows through. Be careful not to fill any areas where the trunk or branches or background will show through.

9) Next I begin filling in with each shade of green I have (except the lightest) with short, sharp strokes that are fairly heavy and a little “squiggly.” I do this with each green until the entire canopy area is nearly completely covered. I use one shade at a time and I keep moving around the canopy, careful not to get too concentrated in any one area with a single shade. Again, be careful to leave the necessary holes.

10) Then I use a blue-green, black and either dark blue or dark purple to create a few shadow areas.

11) I use the lightest shade of green I have and maybe a little yellow to create even fewer highlight areas.

12) Then, I use the darkest brown and a little black to create a handful of small trunk and branch lines within the canopy. The one in the example didn’t have any visible branches within the canopy.

13) Finally I use a dark grey or grey-green to defocus a few spots in the canopy.

And, there you go. A tree by me. Hope this helps somebody.

AB

Anthony

Anthony Billings Art[/url]

[ab39z]

Sorry about the double post. I tried to stop it, but it was too fast.

AB

Anthony

Anthony Billings Art[/url]

[Dyin]

Anthony…thank you very much…you give a great tutorial! I may just be hitting you up for a forum article , this will be a great help to people. I’m so glad you de-lurked, you’re already becoming a real contributing member!
Greenpearl…maybe next week…this is open for the whole month.

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Charter Member of Silver Chord Art Guild

[Dyin]

no problem…I asked our moderator to delete the first post…happens to all of us!

Artist webpage
See my virtual gallery!

Charter Member of Silver Chord Art Guild

[Author]

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