"North Branch Spring"9x12, pastel
Springtime showers have been dragging through the Adirondacks this week. Fortunately, they've been intermittent, giving my students and me plenty of time to paint outside.
Knowing that Tuesday would be mostly wet, we pushed ourselves on Monday to do a number of 5x7s. The intention with these sketches was to gather reference material for painting a studio piece. I had students make a color study of a composition they liked, followed by a study of a particular detail that would add interest to the scene. I've found that, quite often, the general color study doesn't show enough detail to make a convincing picture. To make it so, I like to sketch some detail that I can incorporate later.
Once in the studio, from my two color field sketches I created a nearly full-size value sketch. I used the grid system to transfer the sketch to my surface. I selected a sheet of Belgian Mist Wallis paper, since its color and value are close to the mid-value, warm tone I made the field sketches on. Finally, I used the same palette I used in the field. One way to speed up the process of pastel selection is to save the pastels used in the field in a ZipLoc bag to keep them separate from the others in your box. (I didn't, because I had other paintings to paint.)
I "pushed" the color a bit in my studio piece. Rather than make a larger copy of what I did in the field, I wanted to not only improve the composition but also make the color more exciting. One rarely has time in the field to play with the design and color scheme, so a rainy day in the studio is a perfect opportunity to experiment.
Above is my studio piece and, below, the two field sketches plus my studio value sketch.
By the way, for those of you wondering how the bugs are, the blackflies, like the rain, have been intermittent. Still young, they haven't quite figured out what their purpose in life is and aren't biting.
