The Color of Light: An Artist's Blog

It's important to have an entryway into a painting to your focal point. In this piece, the foreground is a big field - there's no path, waterway, or other obvious entry point. However, I can create an entryway through design, and in this instance, color.

You can see in the beginning stage of this piece that I created a dark path leading to the back of the field. It will be covered up later but it will still slightly show through the layers of pigment I'll apply over it. I also intentionally used the bright pink flowers to create another pathway for the eye to lead back to the structure. That little line of pink at the horizon line is almost like an arrow pointing to the house. 

Painting can be like solving a puzzle. I love figuring out a composition and how to best tell the story of the piece.

Painting smaller is a great way to experiment and see if I'm interested in creating a larger painting of the same scene. If I do decide to paint the scene larger, I have already done the work to a large extent. I've picked out my palette and worked out any compositional issues. I also have mind and muscle memory of painting the scene.

When I painted this 8" x 10" piece the other day I didn't think I was going to turn it into a larger painting, so I cleaned the studio and put away my palette. But after contemplating the painting for a day I decided that I did in fact want to paint it larger. Even though I wouldn't have an exact match of color I knew the mood I was going for so chose my palette accordingly.

 The final look of a painting is influenced heavily by the surface. For the small study I used a sanded piece of repurposed paper that had a neutral gray undertone because I had washed down the old "failed" painting with alcohol. For the larger piece I worked on a dark blue piece of unsanded paper. 

I also decided to turn the entire lower part of the piece into water instead of having more land. When working on a larger piece from a study, I put away the reference photo and work exclusively from my study. I love the freedom of letting go of a photo reference and letting the painting tell me where it wants to go.

Twilight study, 8" x 10" 

I recently stepped away from the easel to frame a couple paintings. There are several ways to frame a pastel painting and differing thoughts on the best method. I've done a lot of research on the subject and my conclusion is that framing with or without a mat is a personal preference - whichever way the painting looks best is how I will frame it.

For these two pieces I decided to frame directly against the glass in the passe-partout method. I took an acid-free backing board, museum glass, and sandwiched the painting between the two. Then I use framer's tape to seal all three together to keep out moisture and air. This method has been used successfully for hundreds of years.

Lastly, I popped them into a couple of plein air frames and drove in some points to keep the painting secured in the frame, and voila! I love how they look behind museum glass with these gorgeous frames.

A few days ago I wrote about repurposing paper for failed paintings. Archival paper is expensive and I don't often throw it out when I can create a homemade surface on it and create another painting. 

There are several ways to prep a substrate in order to paint with pastel. You can create your own recipe depending on how toothy or textured you want your surface to be. I have a bag of marble dust as well as pumice which I mix into a slurry of water and acrylic medium which I will then paint onto my surface. 

There are also pre-made gels and pastes you can purchase from various brands. For this painting I brushed some Golden Fine Pumice Gel directly on a repurposed piece of Pastelmat paper. I wanted a very textured surface so I didn't add any water to the mixture and I used a crosshatch style of brushstroke. Look at this painting and all the texture in it. This is what an interesting effect a homemade surface can lend to a piece.

Sometimes a painting doesn't work out. It happens to all artists! Occasionally I will liberate myself and the unsuccessful painting by tossing it in the bin. But more often I'll repurpose the surface so I can create another painting on it.

I started a piece yesterday but it just wasn't turning out the way I wanted. So I brushed as much pigment off of it as I could, then brushed some Golden Pumice Gel onto the surface. Once it is dry I'll have a very toothy, textured surface to work on. Repurposing a surface is a great way to save expensive art materials.

This subject really excited me with the beautiful back lit flowers and the sun peeking though them. But it can be daunting to approach such a complex subject. 

When dealing with a lot of small shapes, it's important to mass in value first. I always look for the overarching light and dark shapes that make up the rhythm of a piece. Once you have a value map in place you can then focus on shifting the values and hues within a larger value mass. 

In these photos you can see that I've started by laying down and connecting my lights and darks. Once I had my value map down, I could start playing with color. This piece came together by using a lot of broken color, which is simply different hues in the same value. You can see the flowers consist of many colors, including various shades of blue, pink, green, and yellow.

I ended up cropping this painting to make the composition work.  I enjoyed painting this piece and will be exploring and playing with broken color again soon!

Sometimes a composition looks great in your head or a reference photo, but once you start painting it doesn't quite add up. That's what happened with this piece I worked on recently. It's a photo I took of the flowerbed in my front yard last spring. 

At first I really liked the "L" shaped composition in the photo and was planning on painting it pretty much as shown in the reference. But once I started in on the piece, it felt unbalanced. All the white snapdragons on the left were overpowering the piece and drawing too much attention. 

I made the executive decision to add another snapdragon on the right to balance out all that activity on the left. And I think it worked. Using artistic license to make a painting work is fun and effective. 

Artists have many different opinions on signing their work - do you sign at all, and if you do sign, how and where? 

In general I like to sign my work. However a signature can add or take away from the piece, depending on placement. It is part of the painting and needs to fit in, not stick out like a sore thumb. Over time I've found I'm keeping my signature quite small and unobtrusive. Sometimes, if I don't think there is a place I can sign within the painting that will blend in well, I sign on the back. 

My signature has evolved over the years but these days I am simply using my last name. I only add the year if I'm signing a portrait. Even when I do sign a painting, I find that lately I also sign the back. I can write the date there and any other information I find relevant. This has the added benefit that if there is ever a copyright issue I have the original piece and it's clear I created it, as signatures within a painting can be digitally edited. Additionally, some juried contests don't allow signatures on a painting.

Pastel paintings have a longer life than any other type of painting.  As pure, dry pigment, they don't have a medium like water, oil, or egg in them that can degrade the pigments over time, causing yellowing, cracking, or fading. The brilliance and pure sparkling colors of pastel paintings can be seen in works from the 1600s that look as fresh as the day they were painted. 

I love this painting by Jean-Étienne Liotard, which was painted in Vienna around 1745. The gorgeous hues still jump off the page with a glowing brilliance.

But pastel paintings are delicate and must be stored properly until they are framed behind glass. I wrap each of my finished works in glassine, then store them in between the sheets of newsprint or tracing paper until I am ready to send them to their new home or frame them. Here is a photo of a recent painting freshly wrapped in glassine and ready to be stored until framed.

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.

Sometimes if I am having trouble with a composition or seeing value I will employ the photo editor on my iPhone to help me. In this painting that I recently completed as a gift for a friend, I was having a little trouble understanding my value relationships. Since I had decided to work in sections on this painting and not all over the substrate as it came together, I needed help making sure the values I had already placed were correct.

One way to do this is with a photo editor. I took a picture of my work in progress and then digitally added marks in roughly the correct value. This way I don't have to make the marks on my substrate before I'm ready, yet I can still see if what I already have down is going to work with the entire value map. 

It's not a foolproof tool but it is more often helpful than not.

As I continue to grow as an artist I find one of the most important components in a painting that determines its success or failure is how strong the values are. 

I find I work farther and farther away from the easel these days in order to decipher a clear value map. I only step forward to make marks after evaluating where it needs to be placed - walking forward to make the mark, then stepping back again.

This was a fun painting of some flowers on my deck. It came together fairly quickly and is a great example of using a clear value map within a piece to create something vibrant, bold, and loose.

A few days ago my dad came over for dinner and we were able to visit on the deck and enjoy the sunshine. He brought me these beautiful yellow roses. I don't often paint still life but I wanted to remember this beautiful bunch.

I find that I am drawn to yellow in my paintings and that made this bouquet even more tantalizing to me; it was just demanding to be painted! I worked on Art Spectrum Colorfix paper, which I don't use very often but this painting made me think I should pull it out of my stash more often. It has a gorgeous gritty texture, and the fat final layers of pastel really stand up on the page. 

I won't be selling this piece as it has special meaning to me. Whenever I look at these flowers I'll think of my dad and his loving, generous spirit.

All the best, 

Kim