The Color of Light: An Artist's Blog

I'm constantly surprised at how much my palette changes when I work on a dark surface. A color in my hand seems to magically transform to a much different color on the surface (hello simultaneous contrast!). Overall I find my palette becomes much lower key than usual on a dark surface to achieve the result I'm after, mainly because colors appear much lighter on a dark surface than they would on a lighter one. 

When I came up for the idea for The keeper I knew I wanted to work on a dark surface because it would do a lot of the work for me with all the dark drama in the background. So I decided to pull out a 24x18 inch dark UArt panel, mainly because I have a ton of it and wanted to use it up as lately I've been much more keen on La Carte or Pastelmat. But I'm so glad I did. 

The effects on dark UArt can be so lovely. Dreamy, smudgy marks that layer beautifully made me remember how much I enjoy this sanded paper. Instead of reaching for it to "use it up", in the future I think I'll be reaching for it more because I enjoy the results I can achieve with it. 

As I began this piece you can see that the tone of UArt dark is not a true black. It's more of a charcoal. I like this because I can add darker darks as accents. I was working from a reference photo and decided to take some creative license on the composition. You can see that the branch in the middle of the piece was added in with the simple mark up tool on my iPhone. After I had started the painting I wasn't sure I liked that branch just ended (apparently it had broken off) and thought it would help the viewer move around the piece if it was strategically lengthened. 

As with most of my work, even on a dark surface I generally work from dark to light, although I like to get all the values in at the very beginning to give myself a value roadmap - hence the light sky at the top even in this early stage. It's also good to get my most chromatic color in right away.

I really enjoyed working on this piece. If you haven't worked on a dark surface before give it a try! 

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". 

Seeing the big shapes and basic value shifts is key to a successful painting. My husband gave me these gorgeous roses for Valentine's Day and I knew I wanted to paint them. Their brilliant color would stand out and create a striking piece against the warm, neutral background. 

It's easy to get lost in detail, especially when it comes to floral pieces where there are lots of flowers and leaves. Instead of painting all those details, paint the BIG SHAPES. I squint my eyes and look for the shape, and the light and dark. That's what I paint. Not all the details. A few details are nice to add in once you've got the shape and value in, but I've seen many successful pieces that don't add any details. Contemporary and modern works often leave out these details, and I love them. I'm always working toward seeing less detail.

Hope you enjoy these roses! I sure enjoyed painting them. 

I recently took a leap into something I've been wanting to try for some time now - painting a live model with a virtual artists group. These days live Zoom sessions are widely available for artists to join in for a small fee to gain access to a model. 

For this session we had approximately three hours. It was a great experience and I'll definitely be joining more in the future. I loved how the timed session really made me work quickly and spontaneously, and not fuss too much. It was also wonderful drawing practice. If you haven't tried a live model session and want to improve your figure work I highly recommend it. But be warned, I have a feeling it can be addictive! 

It's much more fun than working with photos. 

It's easy to get bogged down by details and information. In a complex scene such as this harbor at sunset, the key to success is simplifying. The viewer doesn't need to see every single detail in a scene. Leaving out unwanted details makes a scene more interesting and helps the viewer become part of the scene and actively participate.

For this little painting I simply and carefully observed the large shapes and rendered those, doing my best to not add in extra details. Dots and dashes will suffice for background information, and a few carefully placed marks create boats and shadows. Here is a photo of this painting in its early stage. Find your ability to see big shapes and half the work is done toward creating a beautiful, complex scene. 

Sometimes a painting needs cropping to make it work. I had started this piece on a 16"x20" mounted board with a composition that ended up not being successful. I loved some parts of the painting but overall the composition just wasn't dynamic enough. So I took out the final editing tool in the artist's toolbox: the crop.

When I first decided to crop this piece I had decided on a 12"x12" crop that included the far left section of the piece.

But I learned a valuable lesson when I turned the piece over, drew the 12"x12" section on the back I wanted to cut and did the deed. When I turned it over I had cut the WRONG SECTION. I foolishly didn't take into account that I had flipped the painting over and so the opposite side would need to be cropped.  So, always check twice and cut once! 

I was determined to save something out of this piece, so I cropped again to a 12"x9". It wasn't as dynamic as the original crop I had in mind, but it still works. 

Here's a photo of the original 16"x20" painting prior to cropping.

This painting was juried into the NW Pastel Society 35th Annual International Exhibition, and I brought it home recently. Looking at it framed and outside of the studio helped me see something that had been bothering me, sort of simmering under the surface since I had created it. 

The trunk was like a black hole. It had no form. I had worked from a photo I took on a sunny day in our kids' backyard, and photos aren't accurate. I had relied too much on the photo and ended up with a boring, too dark trunk. 

I'm proud that the painting was accepted into a show pre-fix, but I needed to correct that trunk. It didn't take long once I unframed it and imagined where the light was hitting the trunk. I'm so much happier with it now. In fact, it's heading to one of my galleries next month. 

Sometimes we have to step back from a painting for awhile and then revisit it to see what needs to be corrected. I'm glad I didn't stash this in a closet because the fix made all the difference. 

Here's the painting before I fixed the trunk. 

Ah, Pastelmat - I have such a love/hate relationship with this interesting paper. Some of my finest works have been created on it, but I also have a larger pile of used Pastelmat sitting in the "didn't make it" bin than any other substrate

There's nothing quite like this paper. It holds a mark like no one's business, which can be a blessing or a curse. In my opinion, it does not hold that many layers of pigment. If I really want to go bold I reach for my beloved La Carte - arguably my favorite substrate of all time. However, when I can get Pastelmat to work in my favor, magic can be made. 

I find that I must plan a bit more with this paper (and I'm not big on planning). Perhaps it's because of its ability to hold a mark so well, and I can't just brush off something I don't like. It lends such a soft quality to the work, almost like velour (which is one substrate I do not work on - I just don't like it). Although I love the soft quality of Pastelmat, I find I must choose my subject wisely when using this paper. If I want an edgy raw look, I don't use it. But I find myself reaching for it almost exclusively when I want to create a sky piece. 

I'll continue using it because when a painting is successful on it, it's REALLY successful. 

I've had several artist friends ask me about my recent entry into several galleries. "How do you approach them? Is there a proper protocol?" My answer to all of them was the same. Paint a ton of paintings. Paint every day. After you have a ton of paintings, email the galleries you're interested in with a link to your work. The work speaks for itself. 

I also put myself out there on social media. I post nearly everything I paint on several art related pages. These days social media platforms go a long way in exposing your art to the world. So be brave and put yourself out there. You just might find yourself some wonderful new opportunities. 

I try to get into the studio each day. Painting is a practice and I believe it's something that must be constantly honed in order to further our skills. One of my favorite things about working in pastel is that it is an "in between" medium in the sense that it is as much a drawing medium as it is a painting medium. 

I just love all the interesting marks I can create with pastel that can be so indicative of the medium. For this painting I worked very directly and loosely, not even looking at the painting at times. I more just  got an idea of where on the surface I knew my hand was and laid down the big shapes. 

For me, it's most enjoyable to really let loose. My favorite part of the painting process is laying in those big shapes and establishing the masses. But working down to the detail is pretty fun too. I guess I love it all.