Archive for the ‘pastel’ Category

At the Falls

Two pastel paintings (drawings? sketches?) from Great Falls in Potomac, Maryland. Visitors are allowed to clamber over the rocks around the falls though signs warn of the mortal dangers of one slip up. There were a number of nice flat rocks to sit on that overlooked the white rushing water.   The day was beautiful with a deep blue sky and  trees and foliage still very green from recent rains. It was a challenge to capture the water as it rushed by and to give it the look of movement and not just a static foreground . It might be more effective just to leave the paper untouched and let the viewer fill that in with their imagination. The color of the rocks is very beautiful. Their tops are pale green with lichen and nearer the water they are pink with dried mud. And when the water gets them wet they are almost black.  I am enjoying pastels. They are easy to transport and easy to apply. If you apply them with a light touch you can leave a little bit of the white paper sparkling through or you can use your finger to smear two colors with a smooth blur. Balancing the sparkle and blur seems to be  the point.

Photos from Wolf Kahn Weekend

Pastels from Wolf Kahn Weekend

Just a few works I did during the Wolf Kahn pastel workshop I attended last weekend. On Saturday we worked outside, and I admit I wanted to create a Wolf Kahn look alike with bold colors and simplified shapes. But choosing those colors and shapes is more challenging than it looks. So I stuck with a more representational style. On Sunday, we worked indoors since it was raining all day. I found the medium of pastel very frustrating. everything I did looked blurry and rough. Getting sharp edges required going over and over the work. But who ever said art was easy?

Channeling Wolf Kahn

I am practicing with pastels lately, getting ready for a workshop with Wolf Kahn. He is a well-known American landscape painter that pioneered the melding of color field, abstract expressionism and impressionist landscape painting. He excels in using intense, seemingly unnatural colors, that perfectly express the light and weather effects of his subject matter. This weekend he is holding a workshop in pastel at the Yellow Barn Studio and, so to be prepared, I have done a few works of which this is the best example. Since you can’t mix pastels very easily you have to have a good selection of colors. Here I am using Sennelier pastels on a very rough white paper. This forces you to work on broad generalizations and not sweat the details. I like how this work conveys a sense of mysterious deep space behind the shed. The color of the inside of the door is different then the outside which looks a bit strange when the door is open but makes for a more interesting work.