Let's Paint with Red

'Love Red'         7x5       pastel       ©Karen Margulis
available $75

I love red. It isn't my top favorite color but I enjoy painting with red. There is something special about pushing a soft piece of red pastel into the paper and getting a rich vibrant mark.  So in honor of Valentine's Day I decided to paint with red.

I had a scrap piece of Uart paper that I had done a quick poppy bloom demo for a student. I decided to take some water to brush in the pastel. I had some watercolor handy from another project so I added a bit of red watercolor. Then just for fun I sprinkled some kosher salt all over the wet pigments.
The result was a cool underpainting. Perfect for some poppies.

The underpainting with watercolor, pastel and salt

 I really like the underpainting so I didn't want to cover it all up with pastel. I decided to paint the poppy blooms first then see what the background needed.

I still like the underpainting background!

 I decided it didn't need much so I very lightly scumbled some peach pastel keeping with the red theme. I added hints of a few stems and called it finished. That was fun!  How about painting some poppies? Here is a tip:

Progression of color for a red flower

• Instead of using just one red pastel for a poppy consider building the bloom from dark to light and cool to warm.
• Start with the darkest value violet or cool red that you see. I like to use purple and brick red for the shadowed part of the flower.
• Increase the intensity and warmth of the reds as you layer the petals.
• Use the side of the pastel to paint larger chunky petals.
• Paint the petals in the direction that they would emerge from the center....how they grow.

If you like these tips and want more poppy tips have a look at my PDF demo available in my Etsy shop for $6. Link here:https://www.etsy.com/listing/263334117/pastel-painting-lesson-demo-pdf