Greywood by Trilight

After creating some landscaping paintings of brightly colored trees I decided to paint a woodland scene with softer and more neutral gray colors. I wanted to capture the cool and tranquil atmosphere of the interior of the woodland in the beginning of autumn. I added a touch of warm orange to add a little color to the scene as well. I used artist quality pastels by Terry Ludwig and Unison on acid free pastel paper by Wallis. 

Greywood by Twilight, Pastel on Pastel Paper, 12x18"

A Portrait of Phragmipedium Geralda

Growing orchids happens to be one of my favorite past-times so when I picked up painting again; slipper orchids where one of my first subjects. Back then I mostly used colored pencil but when bad shoulder problems started to manifest I knew it was time to find another medium. Now I work primarily with soft pastel since it’s the most direct of mediums that requires less preparation and cleanup than oil paint which is my other preferred medium especially for larger landscapes.

Phragmipedium Geralda was my first orchid and has been with me the longest and has to be one of the easiest to grow so naturally it was one of the first orchids that I had to complete in pastel. Actually this is the second orchid portrait since I did complete a small portrait of the Star of Bethlehem orchid last year on Ampersand Pastelbord which can be found Here. I do seem to prefer the Wallis Professional White paper over the Pastelbord since it holds more pastel and is less likely to smudge while I’m working with it thereby making details easier to render. I’m also finding that the Wallis paper works wonderfully to create a soft and airy quality that I just couldn’t achieve in colored pencil. I used my usual Terry Ludwig, Unison and Faber Castell pastel pencils.

A Portrait of Phragmipedium Geralda,

18x12", Pastel on Wallis Paper
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Autumn Birch Walk

Strangely I started this composition in oil pastel last fall and didn’t finish it since I didn’t like the paper; I also found that I didn’t find oil pastel suitable for landscape painting since the colours aren’t subtle enough. I had put it down and forgot all about it until I took a minute to look through my reference images for autumn themed paintings, and decided to use the old reference for a new soft pastel.

The colours don’t seem to be as bright this year, probably due to the dry summer, so I decided to tone the colours down in this one and make is more impressionistic. It seems that every landscape artist needs to attempt birch trees since they have such lovely bark although they aren’t my personal favorite. I hope that I managed to create a bit of depth in this painting which is something that can be difficult to do with woodland compositions; I also focused on conveying life energy and movement by using the pastel marks to create harmony with an almost musical quality.

I also used the white Wallis Professional paper which is indeed wonderful but not a toothy as the Belgium Mist and neither is as thick making it more likely to tear if you aren’t careful when removing the tape from the edges. 

Autumn Birch Walk   12x18"   Soft Pastel on Wallis Paper
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Lakeside Sunset

Living near Lake Erie has given me an appreciation of the beauty and sometimes violet nature of the lake, but it’s always been the sunsets that are the most dramatic. For some reason I never seem to have the camera with me at the right moment so when I saw a friend post a picture of a sunset along the lake on her Facebook page, I just had to ask her if I could use it. Thank you Tracy!

I also tried a new surface with the Colorfix Supertooth paper and like it well enough since it allows for a couple more layers of pastel and it has a much softer texture; however, it doesn't go as far as Wallis Paper. Pastels include the usual Unisons and Ludwigs and the under drawing was done using Faber-Castell pastel pencils. I also used a few of the very warm colors in the Ludwig Plen Air set to make those shadows in the foreground vibrate. I probably took the greatest amount of time trying to recreate that dramatic sky leaving me to wonder why something as soft and simple looking as a sky can be so complicated. This must be the smallest pastel work that I’ve done yet and have to say that it’s great to have a piece that I actually like that isn’t so large and didn’t take so many hours to complete.

Lakeside Sunset, 9x11"

Soft Pastel on Colorfix Supertooth Paper
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The Green Walk

I think it’s funny how artists always say that it’s bad to use too much green in landscape paintings and yet green is one of Nature’s dominate colors;  seemingly, the color of life. It’s is also one of my favorites (perhaps it’s the gardener in me) therefore I decided to break with conventional wisdom and paint a landscape using green as the dominate theme. Sometimes you just need to do things the way you want since art begins with the artists and it is an expression of those artistic desires. I worked from a picture that I had taken near the Grand River in late spring before the terribly dry summer really kicked in so perhaps this is an expression of what summer needed to be instead of what we got. 

I used Terry Ludwig and Unison Pastel on Wallis Belgium Mist paper.

The Green Walk Soft Pastel on Wallis 12x18”
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Stepping into Woodland Light

This painting is taken pretty much directly from a photo taken by a Flickr artist of a place in Wales, UK called Hafod Forest. Normally photographs need a good deal of improvements and several runs through a sketch book before I start the final work but this picture was one of those rare perfect compositions or at least it seemed to have the near magical qualities that I was looking for. I like to capture a certain presence or perhaps an awareness of place in my work, and it’s not at all common to see on such type of  subject and photographer come together in one place.  

This is also the largest work that I’ve done in pastel since first picking them up again. I do like working in the larger format since it allows for more detail and larger paintings are more noticeable. The portal or pathway between the two trees was the primary element that attracted me to the picture, but when reinterpreting the subject I found that it was necessary to be careful and avoid segmenting the composition too much so I decided to soften the lines and integrate the objects together to create more unity. 

I also finally decided to try Colorfix primer after reading all the wonderful reviews for it and felt a little let down after trying it on Canson’s Multimedia sketchbook paper then primed a Canson Art Board and was much happier with that surface. I used my usual Ludwig/Unison combination of pastels and after several hours of work, I am fairly happy with the result. 

Thank you Claire for sharing this lovely place and for allowing me to use your picture. You can find the original photo at Claire’s blog Here. Also you can find more information about the Hafod Estate Here.

Stepping Into Woodland Light 16x20" Pastel on Primed Board
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The Old River Tree

It's been awhile since my last post I see...guess this means that it  has been summer break time...or at least that's my excuse. However, I've been busy at the pastel easel and have completed some new work including this one.

We decided to stop along the Grand River in Cayuga, Ontario on our way back from delivering some work to the gallery, so I took the opportunity to snap a few shots of the river for reference images. I loved how the gnarled willow tree was growing over the river like an old woman stretching after waking from a long nap. The bark was deeply creviced and the leaves and branches allowed the light to travel through creating a lace-like appearance. The sky was partly overcast lending a silvery appearance to the still waters of the Grand which is something I hope that I’ve managed to capture in this painting.

I used mostly Ludwig’s with a few Unison’s on Belgium Mist Wallis paper. For the darker tree trunk and branches I  used the lovely warm brown pastel BE#6 that came with the Unisons Landscape Set of 72, it is the most wonderful rich velvety brown a pastel artist could ever want.

The Old River Tree, Soft pastel on Wallis, 12x18"
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Springtime Reflected

Somehow this painting started out as an autumn scene and transformed itself into a spring scene, not sure how that happened, perhaps it had something to do with the arrival of season after a very long winter. 

I worked on a new surface wanting to experiment with something a little different and I do like how the colors are more brilliant and striking then on the colored surfaces. I had started another pastel on an Ampersand Pastelbord and ended up washing it off and repriming it with several layers of Golden Fine Pumice Gel.  Another time I would use a coarse ground for soft pastel since this would allow for more layers of the pastel and it would be more agreeable with my soft Ludwig’s.

The trees and shrubs remind me of forsythia, purple smoke brushes and apple or pear trees in bloom, which are species I saw frequently in the horticulture business. I also used the beautiful Unison turquoise pastels in the sky along with a very pale and cooler Ludwig turquoise in the water. The colors in water should always be cooler than those on land, one of the ways you can separate land from water. 

Springtime Reflected   12x16"   Pastel on Pastelbord

Northern Marshland

There are so many layers of pastel in this painting, I think I lost track after the 6^th layer so this one seems to be about the tapestry of colour and texture that can be seen in the late summer months here in Ontario. I used Unison and a Terry Ludwig Pastels on Belgium Mist Wallis paper. 

I usually start with a reference photo that has at least 70% of the composition in place and make a few pencil studies before starting and this one was no different then usual except I found myself over simplifying. After looking at it for a couple days I decided to extend the height of the grasses in the foreground so that they are obscuring the main water-way with what I hope is a more pleasing result.

I have a new toy called a Canon Rebel XS EOS which takes much better pictures then my old Canon Powershot but I think that I still need better lighting to get ideal photos. Art work must be the most difficult thing a person can photograph, but it’s all a learning process. 

Northern Marshland, Soft Pastel on Wallis 12x16"

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