The Color of Light: An Artist's Blog

When I looked at this reference photo I took a few days ago I knew I would utilize an underpainting on UArt paper. There are so many wonderful substrates available to pastel artists today and I am admittedly a paper hoarder. I have about every pastel paper out there.

Lately I've really been enjoying working directly on paper without an underpainting, but I felt this piece would benefit from it. Complementary underpaintings can work wonders, especially when there is a blue sky day with billowing clouds, and a lot of green in a reference.

I often like to paint a warm tone under my greens so that a bit peeks though in the final piece, and will often do the same for clouds. However, I decided to try something different and choose more of a local color in the shadow area, a lovely dark turquoise. You can see a couple progress photos below.