Monday, September 14, 2015

Churning Waters...Pastel... in stages

I decided to do this one as a tutorial. I hope you can see the many ways an artist can depict churning water in pastels.

I worked out a plan on my IPad. I used parts of old paintings of mine, and cut and paste them to allow passageways for me to place the waterfalls.

In the second row of photos I roughly scumbled  the colors I wished to use as an under painting first. 
For Example..Where I knew I was going to use a mauve, I placed a very light orange in that area.

I used mauves and some greens in the darker rock areas in places; then my browns later would just skim over the top of these colors, allowing a shimmer effect.

I  used alcohol to diffuse the colors and let this dry.

I usually don't use wet medium under pastels, however thought this might be a good one with which to 'play'. 

Working from the top area down, I began to do the rocks, with a hint of water lapping near and around them. Always, the underneath scumbled colors show through at this stage.



As the painting progressed I used more pressure with my pastels. Wherever I placed the whites, I always lightly dragged a soft yellow, orange or blue over that area, to keep it from getting too chalky.
See the details of sections below for this effect.

I made sure the areas in shadow got a slight blueish tinge; while in sunlit areas,  I used the yellow/orange mix over the whites.


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