Redwoods in Color Pencil

I have two redwoods growing in my garden and love them both and really appreciate the beautiful color then turn into in the fall. I found a picture of redwoods that change to bright red and wanted to do a pencil piece about them. I completed this piece about four years ago and found it in my portfolio where it had been left forgotten and decided that I should pull it out and see if anyone would like to add it their art collection. There have been several hours involved in creating this piece as there is for all pencil art. I have a bad shoulder and don’t work in pencil anymore since it’s very aggravating so this is one of my few color pencil pieces. Faber Castel Colored pencils on acid free paper

Redwoods, color pencil on paper, 11x15"

Autumn Woodland Stream

I’ve been away from my blog most of the winter but I’ve been busy painting in both oil and pastel and finally had a somewhat decent and sunny day when I could photograph a couple of my painting. It’s been a frustrating winter for me artistically and physically since I’ve been unwell on and off for much of it and found myself in a creative rut where everything that I did was less than satisfactory; however, I did manage to complete one landscape painting that I’m mostly happy with, called Autumn Woodland Stream.

This painting is composed from a couple reference pictures that I found of the Bruce Trail near Hamilton, Ontario.  I used to have the odd opportunity to hike along the beautiful woodland along the Niagara Escarpment and have happy memories of those years during my 20s. I did a few value studies and compositional sketches before starting the first block in. All in all there are probably 3-5 layers of oil paint since I used thinner transparent colors to create what I hope is an interesting surface for the painting, than I added details in key areas where I want the viewer’s eye to travel.  I also created several visual pathways using value changes and hopefully well placed tree branches to create a semi dramatic atmosphere in an otherwise quiet woodlot. I hope that I’ve managed to capture a sense of the sacredness of the forest, the water and all its creatures.

For all those pigment fanatics, I used W&N artist’s Titanium white, yellow ocher, cadmium orange, cerulean blue, cobalt blue, burnt sienna and Old Holland, Zinc White, Persian red and French Ultramarine Blue Light Extra (which is great for those darker violets). I’ve starting painting a few studies using pigments by Blockx, Michael Harding and Old Holland and will probably leave W&N behind since the higher quality paint have a much better pigment load  resulting in better luminosity and intensity then the cheaper pigments. The Michael Harding Cobalt blue and Blockx Yellow Ocher are both especially nice, I will be trying more pigments by these two companies in the future. And Old Holland can’t be beat, I adore their FUB and Red Iron Oxide (Persian/Indian Red), together they create a lovely natural mauve, you just need to be careful that you don’t blow the blue out of the water with the super dense Persian red.

For some reason the photo seems to be flattening the composition; in reality, the actual painting seems to have more depth but at least the colors are more or less correct. Camera + painting = frustration. lol

Autumn Woodland Stream, 16x25", Oil On Canvas
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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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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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First Two Works with Soft Pastels

After growing tired of using those scratchy hard pastels I decided to try the softer varieties and after much research about the health hazards and a good deal of colour and value comparisons I ordered Unison and Terry Ludwig landscape sets. The Unison's are as wonderful as expected and the Ludwig's are even better if you like their soft fluffy texture. I'm finding that the harder Unison pastels work better under the softer variety since they can lift the super soft pigment right off. 

I also tried the Belgium Mist Wallis paper and the Ampersand Pastelbord and love both surfaces for entirely different reasons. Wallis is a super toothy sand paper that can take ridiculous amounts of pastel which does appeal to the oil painter within. The Pastelbord on the other hand is far more akin to drawing on paper with a little more tooth and I think it would work very nicely for oil pastel and pencil art if you really like to layer those colours. However, it works wonderfully for soft pastel as well but it won't take as many layers and neither does it faithfully hold onto the pastel making far more likely to smudge. 

I also love working on a hard surface so I will mount a sanded paper on foamboard or some kind of non-warping surface and try Richard McKinley’s wet-underpainting technique. This should also make framing much easier since I can bypass that dreaded matboard thing and all the related gadgets.

  Here is my first soft pastel on Wallis:

Spring Creek 12x18" Pastel on Wallis

And my first pastel on Pastelbord:

Woodland Garden Path 11x14" Pastel on Board