Thoughts From Marsha

Starting a New Painting?

How do you start your paintings ... after you have done a notan or couple of thumbnails?

I want to show you a few images of my beginning (or almost the beginning) and the next step or two. If you have a preferred method, I would love to see it and hear your thoughts. Though I am teaching you with the Paint N' Grow for SPS, we do learn from each other as well. New ideas are always welcome and I enjoy giving them a try. I hope you do as well.

This is the first study I did while painting with friends from the Southeastern Pastel Society a few days ago.

You can see in the upper left where I put some pastel (using a harder brand) and then liquified it with denatured alcohol using a softer type of brush. I am painting on a grey Ampersand Pastelbord... 10"x8" size.

The image in the upper right is after it dried, which only takes about two minutes. I added the light I saw on a tree, and the rocks at the edge of a little creek. I used two values of yellow for the tree, and a couple of values for the rocks. I also uses the side of my "half stick" (I break my Terry Ludwig sticks in half) just like a brush to get wide strokes of pastel. You can see narrow marks which are made by using the edge.

Bottom left is where I used a green-blue and a mauve to create some middle value in the trees and foliage in and around that yellow, and going down toward the edge of the water. You will also see I have moved the edge of the rocks lower on the panel. They were a little too centered horizontally for me. I did also indicate some reflection in the water.

After moving the water edge down, and laying in those middle value colors, I used a piece of foam insulation to blue everything. If you look closely, the only harder edges are at the edge of what will be the rocks... underneath those rocks at the water's edge.

What other changes do you see? Stop and take a very good look at the image bottom left. Write down your ideas, what you see, what you wonder about, etc. Post them!

For me ... this is a part of the beginning I love! I love pulling my details back out after I do the brushing out (softly) or the foam insulation rubbing to soften those edges. At this point, I can do very little... focusing in on only one spot and leaving the rest ethereal... or do more.

The bottom right image is showing you my picking out part. I have chosen the rocks as my primary focus. I have also added some middle-light value in yellow going upward from those rocks to the tree. I have done nothing more to the tree and foliage. I did use a little of a lighter mauve to make lines going from just above the rocks over to the left blue-green. Last part I did was define very slightly the rocks with light marks and dark undertones under the shadow areas off those rocks. This is where the panel stands at this time!

My intention was to create a small study and then do a larger work from it (and maybe the photo toward the end). Not sure if it will be a pastel, oil or acrylic painting!

Much more could be done to this study if I want to do so. If you create your beginning paintings (studies) with the idea of a good abstract of your idea, you can then add the details slowly. If you are wanting to paint "looser" as I hear many students tell me... this is a good way to get a little handle on doing so. You could make this into a photo realistic painting by continuing to refine all the elements, all the edges, etc.

Here is another image (showing the middle stage and where I stopped). This is a 9"x12" Ampersand Pastelbord and I believe it was a white one. I did not use alcohol except sparingly on the first layer.

The left side shows you a much busier scene. I would call this "a lot of chaos!" But I love doing so and then picking out, adding, brushing out, adding again... I think you might get the point.

The right side shows you I did use the foam to soften those first marks. I next used some lights to pick out the rocks, change colors in a subtle way, and the yellow light on a bush above the rocks. I chose a very dark pastel ... probably the Terry Ludwig "eggplant" stick to draw lines and create dark spots and create some upright trunks. I left a lot of this untouched after using the foam insulation to blur the outer edges of the elements. This is more like what our eyes see. More can be done to this study as well.

What I love about doing my beginnings this way is the potential I can see. I might have a plan and I can follow that, but also allow the painting (the study) to speak to me as well.

I hear many artists (students as well) talk about wishing they could paint intuitively. What is intuition? It is only your "gut" telling you what you "should" possibly do. So ... why not give it a try.

I would love to see a painting you have started in this way. Just the first lay in of pastel, and then an alcohol wash if your surface allows a wet technique on it. If it does not ... that brush, that foam insulation ... is a way to soften your beginning and start picking out the level of detail you want.

Intuition = Gut! Gut = Intuition! Beginnings are a great place to play around with this thought. Don't you think?

Here is the photo I used for the two studies... have a look at what I chose to put in!