Sunday, March 11, 2012

The First Steps of the Journey

Here are the first four paintings of the challenge.  I was working on this little experiment before I decided to accept Larry Seiler's challenge of painting 120 small paintings.  I wanted to see how different colored under paintings would affect the painting, so I painted the same scene with under paintings of violet, magenta, turquoise and yellow ochre, using Pan Pastels.

I used the same colors in the tree, other than a few accents, but I used the hues I felt would look the best for the sky and field.  As you can see, the under painting has a huge influence on the outcome of the painting.  They all have a distinctive look.  This was a valuable experiment to actually group the paintings together and  see the difference.

One thing I know I have to work on is the foreground.  I have to go study some pastel paintings of some artists I admire and see how they do it.  Tree foliage isn't making me panic anymore, but I know there is still a lot of room for improvement.  I still have plenty to work on, but I guess that's why I started this blog and accepted Larry's challenge.

Here are the first four paintings.  I am including the under paintings as well.  They are all 5 x 7 and are painted on UArt 400 grit paper using a variety of soft pastels and Pan Pastels.

Thanks for looking.

#1



#2



#3



#4


Doug

2 comments:

  1. Doug, these are great. I love seeing the difference the different underpaintings created - they change the weather. It looks like the same scene in different seasons or times of day, very beautiful interpretations.

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  2. Thanks,Robert. I knew the different under paintings would influence the paintings, but I wanted to see how much. It was a good little experiment and I plan on doing more. Maybe try doing a painting using five or six pastels. I remember we did a challenge at WC a few years ago, using that many pastels and I was amazed what we all came up with. Fun stuff. Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.

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