by Bethany | February 4, 2019
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Hi everyone! Happy Monday!
The beginning of the week has become “video time” as I’ve been posting and new work over on Youtube and also at Patreon! I have liked the Monday upload date as it gives me more time to create and edit the work (back before I took my Youtube break, I was uploading on Thursdays which was so much harder to maintain!). The time-lapse on Youtube is short and sweet and gives you a good glimpse of this piece “The Summer Path.” If you’d like to watch and learn in “real-time” – the video is over on on my Patreon page! It’s an hour long video and full of lots of details and me giving instruction. You can click the button below or right here.
Heres the quick video about the piece over on Youtube (just click play below).
This painting is different for me because I was experimenting on some Richeson paper I received as part of a prize package for a recent exhibit! Thank you so much to Richeson for sending me the paper! (<—that link is to the Richeson gator foam board surface and is a “hard” support compared to the 140 lb. paper I used…This is the only link I could find to the actual paper ) Are they phasing this paper out?…anyone know?
I chose the “Shale” pre-toned paper and as I hadn’t used it before, experimented with both a water and nupastel underpainting (<—love this set if you don’t have any or this one if you’re all in) and also the nupastel with alcohol. I found the alcohol worked the best as the water buckled the paper a bit and took much longer to dry and flatten.
The pastels pictured above are a combination of these brands:
- Unison Colour
- Terry Ludwig
- Townsend
- Nupastel
- Great American
- Rembrandt
- Sennelier (<—the sale on these over at Dick Blick is crazy!)
- Vintage Grumbacher (ebay has these all the time! Here is a beautiful set with an auction ending today!)
I used a variety of soft and hard pastels throughout the painting, weaving in light and color and also creating distance with the cooler purples in the back tree line. Adding the golden sky towards the end was so satisfying…that final value adds such richness and “light” (literally & figuratively) to the piece!!
The entire hour long lesson is on Patreon! Join me over there to see the full painting process. (including reference photo). I have a new lesson each week and I’ve loved getting to share them with in our growing community of artists and magic-makers.
xoxo,
Bethany
