Pastel Landscape in the style of Roland Gissing

Last Friday I had an enjoyable afternoon at Adult Day Support Program having a short Art Lesson on painting a pastel landscape in the style of Roland Gissing. http://www.rolandgissing.com/index.html At right is my landscape based on the cover of the current Okotoks Program Guide http://issuu.com/town_of_okotoks/docs/spring-summer_arts_guideulture  Our instructor gave us orange construction paper to draw on and you can see some of that orange paper highlighting the clouds and sky and in the bright foreground. We worked from the horizon down and turned the paper and worked from the horizon up. We left out stokes of wheat since that was difficult to duplicate in a small painting. The finished landscape has a brilliant contrast from the blue sky and the orange foreground.

Portraits

This portrait of a Chinese woman is partially completed. I still have to add details to the hair jewelry and the silk dress. The dramatic contrast of the soft pink accents and painted face against the dark hair and brilliant blue sky adds excitement to this portrait.  The exotic dress and makeup of the model makes for a brilliant painting. The long narrow vertical portrait adds interest also.

Pastel Abstract

The following link takes you to a five minute video exploring different soft pastel techniques in an abstract painting exercise. Take a few minutes to just enjoy working with the pastel making soft curving shapes and patterns.
http://www.artistsnetwork.com/video_preview.aspx?id=14137

Close Cropped Flower

Georgia O'Keefe is famous for her large oil pantings of extreme closeups of flowers. Cropping paintings of florals closely give them an almost abstract and very feminine appearance. The following link takes you to a sight where you can view many of her paintings of flowers. http://www.georgiaokeeffegallery.com/Floral.aspx

Here is a close up photo that I took of a tiger lily.  I cropped it even further with a  pen outline on the photo before I began to work on the pastel painting.

Unlike Georgia O'keefe I chose to work on a smaller suface 9" X 7". I chose suede board as the base since it holds a lot of pastel layers and has a rich smooth look in the final project. I sprayed with workable fixative between layers of pastel and finished with a final fixative spray when the work was completed.

The final project is brighter, smoother and softer than the photo. You can almost feel the velvet of the petals.

The following are photos of flowers I took and cropped upclose . Use them as reference material for your own pastel paintings or take some photos of your own to experiment with. Don't be afraid to crop the photos even closer to emphasize a certain element of the flower.

Glue and Pastel Flower Project

The following link takes you to an easy fun impressionistic flower project using white glue and pastel on dark paper. Above are a couple of photos I made of flowers that you can use for inspiration.

http://deepspacesparkle.blogspot.com/2009/04/chalk-pastel-flowers-for-sixth-grade.html

Here is my sunflowers piece in stages of completion:

The first step is a loose impressionistic drawing with the glue bottle.
The next step is to allow the glue to dry until clear.

The last step is to fill in the spaces and blend colors.

I think the next time I try this I'll use a darker toned paper this was a mid range grey brown and I would've liked more contrast.

The spoon daisy pastel painting was completed in the following stages:

Again I did a loose impressionistic drawing with the glue and then let it dry.

I finished with pastels and blending. I quite like the contrast of the bright flowers against the dark background.

I think I'll do a negative effect by doing the glue on bright white paper and using shades of a single color to fill in the pastel work.

I hope you are inspired to give this method a try.

Autumn Pastel Landscapes

To the left side of this page are photos of autumn landscapes. Let these be an inspiration. Fall is such a great season for art because the colors are so dynamic. Pastels come into their own because of their immediacy and vibrant hues.
Chose a nice contrasting base paper such as a slate blue if the foilage is vibrant yellows and oranges. Work quickly without over analyzing what you are doing. Go for an impressionist rather than an ultrarealistic landscape. Catch the mood of the landscape rather than every leaf and twig. Enjoy the feeling of working with your hands making strokes and blending colors.

Here is my completed Autumn landscape. I especially enjoy the brilliant colors of the leaves on the tree contrasting with the greenery in the bushes.

Learning From the Master: Degas

Degas is famous for his pastels of Ballet Dancers, Jockeys and Landscapes.He was a prolific artist producing more than 1500 drawing and pastel paintings in his life. The immediacy of the pastels brilliant hues are undiminished by time even though they were painted in the 1880s. A hundred years later two Degas pastel paintings sold for $3,000,000 each.

Degas worked in many layers of soft pastel which was particularly successful in the billowy flowing skirts of the ballerinas. He used fixatives between the many layers of pastel to prevent smearing work on lower layers and add texture through crosshatching. He used handmade pastels from a Parisian shop. Following is a link to an interesting article about that shop today: http://in.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idINIndia-31814020080207

As Degas aged and his sight began to fail, he worked more frequently in pastel and eventually turned to sculpture. His pastels of figures began to emphasize form with brilliant colors and outlines drawn repeatedly in dark colors.