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At WetCanvas, there was a discussion/educational thread about how to paint snow which gave me the idea to paint my Flowing Ice. The view is from a privat castle outside Stockholm, Tyresö slott. When I shot the reference, there were unusual high water-levels, which then froze to ice. The whole swirly area of ice is a flooded meadow. Normally, the water would be behind the reeds and the boathouse, to the right. The dark "thingy" behind and to the left of the boathouse is a small jetty.

I've not painted many snow-scapes, as I really do not like the cold... Sure, snow is pretty, but it is also cold!

As I'm learning the use of Notan, I made some of these miniature studies:


I chose to use the bottom one for my painting, but without the dark upper right corner. Not that I know what I do, but it seemed to me that extending the background trees beyond the picture would create a more interesting shape and lessen the horizontals as the sky would be broken up and not be one mass. I also considerably lightened the landmass behind the boathouse, keeping all the really dark darks in, around, and connected to the boathouse. In the last notan is it also clear that I changed the patch of snow in the lower left corner so it would point to, and visually connect to, the bg snow, and not be a line that chopped off the corner.

Then I chose a terracotta coloured sheet of Colourfix, made the skeleton drawing, and painted in the first colour-statements. These set the light of the painting, and are flat pure masses of colour:

You can see clearly what the picture represents at this stage, but not if it is land or water. It is also very clear it is a sunny day, with very long shadows, so it is either early morning, late afternoon, or midday sun up by the 60th latitude in January/February.

Next, I made the colours more 'right', by painting on top of the first statements. I like to finish the sky pretty quickly, as it helps me judge the other colours, and also because the trees will go on top of they sky, as they are in the background and I want them hazier, more muted, not so harshly silhouetted. There are several layers of colour involved in making the still flat areas 'right':

Now it is crystal clear it is a winter scene. I developed the boathouse a bit further (beyond flat statements), as that unavoidably will be the area of interest, human artifacts in a landscape always are. In fact, the painting could be finished at this stage, as all the relevant information is there. I will not develop every area, some will remain as they are here. I've rushed ahead a bit more, and started to indicate depth of space in the flat planes.

Next, I developed more space, put in the really dark darks as I felt they were needed, and painted most of the swirls in the ice.

I pushed the house a bit lighter, to make the door part of the dark detials. I've started to work on details and edges.

And in the finished painting, I've added the trees in the bg, and the footprints of an animal, probably a dog, who has run happily over the ice and snow (so the snow wouldn't be a too boring area). I've added the sleeping bush, and reeds, all which are details. And I've paid close attention to edges. See for example how the roof-lines of the boathouse do not run unchecked off the page, they are blurred, which also serves to create the illusion of three-dimensionality:

Why is this picture cooler than the others? Because the others are photographed in incandescent light, and the finish in overcast daylight which brings out the colours much better than the light-bulbs.

A detail of the snow in lower right corner, with footprints. As you can see, the snow isn't as yellow as it seems -- it is the glow of the underpainting that peakes through the rather grayed upper layers:


And another detail from the distance:


And from where the ice ends and meet the snow in shadow:

Luxurious blues, eh? That is the strength of the Unison pastels!

24x32cm

While a simple sketch, this is a milestone marking a development in my development as an artist. It is on plain simple paper, Fabriano's Ingres, wich I seldom use for actual paintings, as it doesn't allow for much layering. The reason I celebrate this sketch is because it was drawn and painted in only one hour and 30 minutes! Speed has sneaked up on me, while I was not looking. A very pleasant surprise, as similar sketches about 6 months ago took me twice the time to paint. My goal of speeding up enough to do plein air is much nearer!

The reference was originally posted by Cyndi on WetCanvas, in the Weekly Drawing Event. I decided to make a notan, to test linking the darks to each other. I also lightened the bg mountains, but as I'm lazy, I tried the look of making them dark on the same notan...



Painting is a constant struggle to learn, but it is the learning and discovery of new things that brings such joy!

And if someone likes your painting, that is added joy.

Pastel sticks come in many different brands. For a year, I've mostly painted with Rembrandt and Schmincke -- both good quality brands. The Rembrandts are a rather firm pastel that work well on almost any surface -- my workhorse pastel. Schmincke's pastels are like 'whipped cream', as they are supersoft, and can give a very decent impasto effect. I've used them over the Rembrandt's, because I'm a tad heavy handed, so I've needed to not fill the tooth of the paper too quickly.

But I felt I also wanted a brand that was somewhere between those two in relative hardness, so I decided to test the UK brand Unisons and got their Dark Jewels set, and their Special set. I realy liked the pigment intensity, and them being both soft and firm enough, so I got a 72-stick set with mostly what some call chromatic colours (those of the rainbow), and while I was at it, the set of Turquoises was so delicious so it somehow jumped into the shopping basket, and took the Orange set along. :-) With some extras, this is how my Unison collection looks right now: 

 Oh, yes, a set of Lights sneaked into the order, too.

The Starter set (the large one at the back of the pic) is organized in a way that I find impressive and like a lot: In the middle, there are the most pigment-saturated sticks, with lighter version towards top and bottom.




If we take the 3rd row from the right, the greens, there is a progression from the middle upwards of lighter and cooler greens, while down-wards the progression is ligher and warmer. This is really brilliant, because when white is added to a colour, it cools, dulls, and lighten (or whiten) them, which makes even warm colours go very cool the lighter the tint is. The maker of Unisons does what I did when painting with oils -- he adds a bit of yellow to the green (either together with white or yellow only) to warm it.




Visually the progression from darker to lighter *warm* greens is way more satisfying than mere tints. The lightest and yellowest are newsprung leaves in spring sunshine, while the more saturated warm greens are summer foliage in sunlight. On the cooler side, the greens are 'dustier' and look like foliage during an overcast or cloudy day. Extremely usable system, in my opinion.

To test the new sets of Unisons, I painted a vignette of a rose, on black Canson Mi-Teintes:

 (Larger version on the website.)

The Unisons performed wonderfully. As I layer and crosshatch a lot, creating my own colour-vibrations, I was really pleased with the fact that I could add several more layers than I'd even hoped for. The different colours 'married' really well, not creating anything resembling 'mud', but only rich vibrant colour. What more can one ask for?

Now, I only really need some special Terry Ludwigs, and that beautiful Flinder's Violet from ArtSpectrum.... Plenty is never enough for most pastellists.


 

I'm a WetCanvas addict. One reason is the Image Library, where photos taken by artists are shared with other artist for free use as reference material. I want to thank Susan (username susnfx) for the great photo I used for inspiration for my painting "Aspens and Path". I chose a portion, and simplified all that busy 'green stuff', rejected some trees, and came up with a start of a dry pastel painting. It is on an artist's sandpaper, Fisher 400. Unison pastels are rich in pigment, so I decided to wet a brush with water and brush out all that lovely pigment:

      

The wetted pigments filled the tooth of the paper wonderfully well. I allowed it all to dry thoroughly before continuing applying pastel in a slightly looser and more 'scribbly' way than usual -- the painting is relatively big for this medium.



Here I stopped for a while, having almost finished it. Now I needed to make the final decisions. The background yellowy foliage was too yellow, competing with the more close foliage. The simplified mass of firs was too simple and silhouetted. The light stroking the bushes were too close to the edges, and some other minor fixes. After playing some with a picture of the painting in the computer, I decided on some changes, and went back into the studio.

And this is the final result:              And a detail, showing strokes and layers:

       

Larger version found on my website.