The Color of Light: An Artist's Blog

This vibrant scene immediately called out for a bright underpainting to really showcase the sparkle and brilliance of summer that I wanted to convey. Since there is a lot of green in the grasses and trees, I decided to go with a very warm underpainting. Specifically I wanted to use various tones in the red family, which is the opposite of green on the color wheel - they are complimentary colors.

I'm working on UArt 320 that I mounted on board. I decided to keep the entire underpainting relatively warm but I didn't use red everywhere. For example, the turquoise in the underpainting where the sky will be is much warmer than the  blue that I'll lay over the top of it. But the warm turquoise bits will peek through and warm up it up beautifully.

Once the underpainting is dry I start going in with my background foliage. I'm using Girault pastels for this piece. I won a beautiful custom set of 75 for my collection of works in the 2022 International Pastel Salon in Saint-Aulaye, France, and I wanted to try them out! I love their unique texture and ability to create both delicate lines and bold swathes of color because of their shape.

You can see how beautifully green lays down over red here in this mid stage of the painting. I also have laid down neutrals in the house because while it's certainly a large focal area in the painting, I actually want the flowers in the forefront to be the stars of the show. Keeping the house neutral also helps create balance and avoids a garish quality that can appear from using too much chroma throughout the piece. As Matisse said, "A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful".