A little foray into Pastels - trees on tinted paper.

I rediscovered the joys of colour pastels during a two-day pastel workshop that I held in the summer.  The students embraced the challenges of the chalks, and enjoyed the effects particular to this medium, including their tactile nature. Getting the hands dirty!

Students on the workshop

Some student studies from the first day

I  fell in love with the immediacy of the chalks and decided to do a few more drawings myself after the workshop, to see how far I could push them. I hadn't done any tree paintings for a while (I love trees but find them so challenging that I can only do one or two per year,,,,) so thought it would be interesting to see how they would turn out, in pastels. 

The start! Rough and general, not specific.

I chose to work on grey paper, size A3. I began by gently marking where I wanted the tree trunks, drawing them lightly in lilac, as bold structure-lines breaking up the page. I then roughly blocked in the contrasting tones, with particular attention to the brightest areas so as to retain the clean lights. 

Close up of the textures

Once the big tones were blocked it, I revisited adding detail using shorter strokes. I learnt a great deal, about how much (or how little) layering the pastels accepted, and how some looser areas help direct the viewer's gaze. It was satisfying, interesting and frustrating, in equal measure. It took about 4 days at the easel. 

The finished artwork - 'Light Through the Trees at Shaw's Bridge'

Autumn colours. 

For the next tree-scape I chose a blue paper, and marked in the trunks first, as previously, keeping the sunny-side of the trunks white and the shadow-sides cool blue and purple, which contrasts vividly with the folks and browns. 

For info on workshops and weekly classes please email julie@juliedouglas.co.uk 

Cold!!

It's been a cold cold winter, and even with the heating on, the studio is fairly chilly. But my wonderful students, they wrap up with more layers, and keep on keeping on! 

For the first time in all my years of teaching, the studio is full of blankets for putting on laps - and it's cold enough that no one scoffs! A blanky is a lovely thing!

 

Charcoal and oil wipe out technique, gladioli and wild garlics

Hoorah, the buds are peeping out and spring is trying its best to appear!! So my eye has been attracted to plants. For the first time in my life, I bought some artificial flowers, so that my oil painting students could paint lilies without having to see them wilt. The only creepy thing is that the lilies themselves were fairly identical.. but they served an excellent purpose. I also succumbed to some rather splendid stems of artificial gladioli, and did a charcoal study as part of my demonstration. 

Previously, I drew some wild garlic, photographed while on a trip to Cavan with friends. We walked down a rarely-used path and the sides were banked with vast swathes of wild garlic - the aroma was wonderful. 

I did a charcoal study first, see demos below, then an oil painting. 

I began the oil painting in the same way as the charcoal, by loading the canvas with raw umber paint, wiping out the light areas, adding more ray umber where needed and wiping out again. It's a lovely soft process, allowing the work to remain blurry and unfocussed in a different way to a purely additive technique. 

After the underpainting, I painted over it with a Grisaille...

 

...then painted over the grisaille in colour. 

 

Below, the finished painting, with two layers of colour, over the Grisaille. 

For info on workshops email julie@juliedouglas.co.uk