Early on a Winter's Evening

There is a certain enchanting beauty about a heavy snowfall on evergreens at the end of a winter’s day. I wanted to capture the peaceful quality of a northern Canadian landscape since this is where I’m from and we certainly have had a peaceful and long winter this year, which has brought several inches of snow although I am getting rather tired of the snow at this point in the year. This will probably be the last snow painting that I depict for a bit and plan on painting other subjects including a few spring landscapes if I can find the proper references or the wherewithal to paint.

I rarely talk about the actual application of the pastel however it might be interesting to some so…Many pastelists like to use harder pastels in the beginning and layer the softer ones over top however I don’t really like the hard pastel I have well enough to use them so I move straight to the Girault which are medium hard to the really soft one’s like Ludwig and Unison and keep layering until I either achieve what I want or I run out of layering surface. I don’t bother with an under-painting or anything fancy. It’s better to concentrate on things I need to work on improving such as the values changes, composition and color application.

Early on a Winter's Evening
Etsy

Silver Light by the Sea

I was thinking about water, wind and the weather and how it would be great fun to go see the ocean and see how it spoke to me. I liked the silvery morning light and the pink and violet clouds in the sky and the contrast between the rocks and the light on the water. The water seemed fairly calm so I decided to keep the marks smooth and I blended the colors a lot and I tried to capture the movement of the water around the rocks in the foreground. I used the same Terry Ludwig, Unison and Girault Pastel combination I always use on Wallis Pro White Paper.

Silver Light by the Sea, pastels on pastel paper, 12x18"