Five Tips for Painting Yellow Trees

'Aspen Gold'        12x16          pastel        ©Karen Margulis sold

The excitement is building. There won't be aspens but I hope to see the reds and oranges of fall! Next week Michael and I are taking a New England cruise from New York City to Quebec City. I've packed my sketchbook and my Heilman sketchbox and my camera. I plan on doing some Facebook Live broadcasts along the way and I have scheduled blog and Patreon posts in case I have technical difficulties!  Since I have to pack this weekend I am sharing a post from the archives on painting yellow. Enjoy!

Painting the yellow foliage is my challenge. I don't know about anyone else but I find yellows to be tricky with pastels. It is hard to get them as bright, clean and vibrant as I want to.  I am always looking for ideas to help me with yellows and I'd like to share five of my favorite techniques.

Gouache Underpainting

• Try a yellow underpainting under the areas that will be yellow. It gives your yellows a head start. For this painting I did a gouache underpainting.

• Use your softest pastels. The softer pastels have more pigment and I can get juicier marks with them. This way the yellows don't mix with the colors underneath as easily keeping the yellows pure. In this painting I took an extra step and dusted soft yellow pastel pieces on the painting and rolled them with a rolling pin to set them into the paper.  (see my post on this Dusting Technique HERE)

• Try to mix warm and cool yellows in the areas that you are painting yellow. I find that if I place warm yellows next to cool yellows, the color looks more alive and vibrant.

• When building up your layers of Yellow, start with a darker yellow or an orange yellow so the lighter and more intense yellows will stand out in contrast to these darker areas.

• Use the compliment of yellow....Purple!  Using the complimentary color purple or violet next to the yellow intensifies it and makes it appear more vibrant. Be sure not to mix the yellow and purple or you will get muddy color.

I hope these tips are helpful. I use these techniques whenever I am painting things that have big areas of yellow such as sunflowers!  Do you have any tips for using yellow? I'd love to hear them.

Join us over on my Patreon page! The challenge this week is painting Yellow ! www.patreon.com/karenmargulis

Use Your Uglies. A Tip for Painting Autumn Aspen Trees

'Autumn Appeal'              8x10          pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $145

It was on my bucket list. The last two years I was lucky. I was lucky to be out west at the peak of fall foliage season. I had dreamed of seeing aspen trees with their golden fall colors. It was worth the wait and I have hundreds of photos from my aspen excursions.

As soon as fall rolls around I get the bug....I want to paint fall color! I go crazy in my studio painting as many fall scenes as I can. Today I pulled out one of my aspen photos for inspiration. As much as I love painting them the bright yellows can be a challenge.

Today I stumbled upon a tip a bit by accident. It was a failed underpainting that gave me the clue.

Wet underpainting with pastel and alcohol. Meh.

I was using a piece of dark gray Yi Cai paper. I like this paper but my alcohol wash wasn't very exciting. the colors were dark and dull when the underpainting dried. I forged on with the painting even though I wasn't excited about the underpainting.

That was it!  The dark and dull underpainitng was actually a good thing. It allowed my bright intense yellows to pop! Just like painting on dark paper, the brights needed the contrast of the dark and dull.

First layer of pastel.....dark and dull

 TIP: Start dark, dull and boring! Use your UGLIES! Those colors that don't scream for attention. The quiet ones are needed to balance the loud ones!

Adding more layers of cool, dark and dull

Darker and duller colors on the left with more intense, brighter on the right

Would you like more YELLOW tips? Would you like to join the weekly challenge and share with others? Consider joining us over on Patreon. The theme this month is painting autumn landscapes!
www.patreon.com/karenmargulis

One Important Task Before Painting

'Transitions'         9x12        pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $125

A painting should begin with a plan. I have a few steps involved in my planning stage. I admit I sometimes skim over some of them but lately I have added a step that I won't skip. It is all about the color!

Color can be chaotic without thought and planning. 

Some artists are fortunate and  have a finely tuned sense of color.  They instinctively know just which colors to pick up. They make interesting and harmonious color choices seemingly without effort and without preplanning.  I admire that ability but I don't like to leave color to chance. I don't want to get halfway through a painting and become lost in the pile of pastels that is growing on my easel tray. I don't want to deal with color chaos.

Now I don't have to take my chances with color anymore. I make time to make a

 COLOR NOTE STUDY.

a 2.5 x 3.5 inch color note study.

• Color Note Studies are small scraps of paper (preferably the same paper/color of the painting) They are not detailed mini paintings.

• Color Note Studies are simply marks on the paper that represent the various elements in the painting.  They can be a very loose abstracted series of marks.

• Color Note Studies allow the artists to see how the colors selected for a painting will look together and their approximate relationships. 

• The studies save the artist much frustration and saves pastel. We can visualize how a color palette will look before experimenting on a bigger piece of paper. Experiment on a tiny piece!

Today's painting was a demo for a private class. I was painting from a photo of a summer meadow filled with pink flowers. My concept was to turn the meadow into a fall scene with yellow flowers. The color study notes helped me see if my color choices would work for my concept.

Try This: Make a commitment to do a color note study for your next painting. Decide in advance what your palette will be and test out your choices on a scrap of paper.

What is this Patreon Page you are talking about? 

I have had some questions and concerns about the new platform I am using to share additional instructional resources. My Patreon Page is EXTRA STUFF! I will still post to this blog and make free videos for youtube but I will offer expanded posts with themes and challenges and demos in Patreon. The page is $4 a month. This blog and my Youtube channel are free and will continue to operate as usual!

THANK YOU to all of you who are now supporting me on Patreon. I am excited to be able to share even more with you. Check it out if you haven't seen it yet: www.patreon.com/karenmargulis

And here is a comment from an artist who uses Patreon:

To your subscribers, I follow a few creators in Patreon and this is an excellent way to learn more of their techniques and really get to know how they think when they are painting. It is an excellent value for the immense amount of information you receive. There is no long-term commitment. You pledge $4 a month and get email notification when something is posted on Patreon. You can unsubscribe to a creator whenever you want before the first of the month and not be charged that next month. Your rate never changes unless you change it. Karen may decide to add Patreon features such as one on one critiques at a higher rate and you can sign up if you want or not. One of my creators allows 10 patrons a month this feature as you can imagine it's very intensive and time consuming for them. But again, you may elect to do it one or two months and then stop so another student can have the opportunity. All in all, Patreon is a great feature for students and gives the creator the necessary funds to be able to test out new products and demonstrate for us, show expanded detailed videos of their techniques and give us a sneak peak into their art world! Win-win!!

Everyone Needs this Color!

'In the Mauve'           8x10        pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $125

 You can tell from the photo. This has become one of my well loved go-to pastel sets. Everyone needs this set or at the very least these colors in your favorite pastel. The set is called Misty Mauves and they are Diane Townsend soft form pastels. I bought them on a whim and I find I use them all of the time.  Mauves isn't just an 80's thing....How many of you had mauve carpet?  :)
These mauves are a must! The mauves and light peachy pinks are perfect for landscape painting.

• They are perfect for the dirt or colors under grass.

• They are wonderful layered with greens in trees and shrubs. They add a bit of warmth and light and make the greens come alive.

• They are perfect for dried grasses. I love them for fall landscapes but even a green meadow had dried grass!

•  I love using them to build up the grays in the sky and clouds.

For today's painting I challenged myself to use this set for the majority of the scene. I used a few Terry Ludwig greens and blues and they worked perfectly together. Do you have these colors in your collection? What can you paint with them?

Diane Townsend Misty Mauves set of soft form pastels available at Dakota

The underpainting with misty mauves and blues

Join me on my new Patreon page. It is like my blog with extra content! I just finished
a three part step by step paint along demo of an autumn landscape. Check it out!
www.patreon.com/karenmargulis

Why a Tie-Dye Underpainting is Cool

'The Beauty of Sparseness'          8x10        pastel         ©Karen Margulis
available $145

 I didn't intend to make a psychedelic underpainting. It was one of those fun happy accidents. But I embraced it's coolness and made it work for me. Now you can be sure I will be trying to recreate the tie-dye effect in future underpaintings. Here is why and how I did it.

I love these things!!! Read more

I was sharing unusual underpainitng techniques with a student last week. We tried the Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons and my favorite fun medium.....Art Graf pigment squares. I've reviewed them on my blog here. They always surprise me. Their intensity explodes with a little water or alcohol. Only a tiny bit is needed to get bold intense color. They dry just as intense!

For my demo I wanted to show how the primary color Art Graf squares could be used to create more colors. I made purples and green and orange. I had it all and when I wet the pigment they mixed and mingled and went tie dye on me!

The underpainting looks like tie dye!

I wasn't sure what I would do with it but then I realized it was a great start for a subtle quiet painting.

• I am reminded that it is easier to tone down and lighten a passage than it is to make it bolder or more intense. 
• It is good to have a little boldness in a mostly quiet painting. These tiny bits of dark and intense color is a good balance for a mostly gray painting.

I had a quiet marsh painting in mind so the tie dye underpainting would provide just enough variety. Cool!

close up detail

QUESTIONS ABOUT MY NEW PATREON PAGE

I want to thank you for your wonderful response to my new page. Welcome to all of my new patrons! I have posted the second installment to the paint along and I am excited about how it looks! I want to clarify that the content I will share on the Patreon page is IN ADDITION to this blog and my Sunday videos. I hope you will consider the $4 a month pledge for the expanded content but rest assured I will continue to post as usual here! Check out the new page here www.patreon.com/karenmargulis

Why My Blog Isn't Good Enough

'Fall Harmony'          9x12        pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $165

 I've been blogging for 12 years now. I owe my blog a big thank you. It has been good to me. I have grown as an artist and met so many wonderful people because of the blog. But it isn't good enough!  Don't get me wrong. I love my blog and I love to share and it is not going away. But I want to share so much more. I have been asked for more videos and more instruction and more access to handouts and reference photos and individual critique and online mentoring...and more video! You get the picture.

 But I like to keep things simple.....I like things to be Low Tech, Low Cost and Low Maintenance. And I have not found a platform that would let me share more in a simple way.....until now!

I am excited to share that in addition to my regular blog I will now offer expanded instruction on my new page on Patreon.com/karenmargulis. The new content will include monthly themes featuring step by step paint along demos through photos, weekly exercises, handouts, reference photos, expanded and curated blog posts,access to select pdf demos,  patron discounts on original paintings and much more.

Are you intrigued? Here is a sneak peek at what you can expect on the new page.  The month of October is devoted to painting the Autumn Landscape. I have already posted some blog tips as well as my PDF demo on painting an autumn marsh. This week I will be sharing a step by step demo of the painting in this post. The reference photo is below. I took 50 photos as I painted and will share many of them along with descriptions of each step so you can paint along if you wish. I share demos here on the blog but they will be expanded on the Patreon page. So what is Patreon? Keep reading for more....

The reference photo that is the inspiration for the demo painting

Adding the finishing touches

Patreon is a platform that enables creators to share their work with their fans and supporters who become  Patrons.  Many of the old masters had patrons who paid and supported them so they could create. This is the model for Patreon.com. In return for making a pledge you become a patron and receive rewards such as more videos, discounts, access to patron only content. Creators can set the reward tiers for their page. I only have one reward tier right now. The pledge is $4 per month which will unlock all of the patron only goodies such as this step by step demo. Your support will allow me the time needed to create better instructional resources for you. When I reach my goal of 500 patrons I plan to hire a professional to make a DVD!

This is an exciting new venture for me and I am working through the learning curve. I plan to post new content to the page a few times a week. If you become a patron you can elect to be notified when I make a new post/add more content. You can visit my page www.patreon.com/karenmargulis

 to see what is available so far. I have a list of goodies that I will be sharing in the coming days! :)

New Video Demo on Uart Dark Paper!

'Autumn Grace'            9x12         pastel        ©Karen Margulis
sold

I've been doing some house painting on the weekends. It hasn't left me with time to do a Sunday Studio Live demo. This week we made time! I decided to do my demo painting on the new Uart Dark paper since I have been playing with it all week. It was perfect for an autumn landscape!  The painting went through a transformation after the demo and I will share the finish in this post. You can see the entire demo on my Youtube channel. Here is the link:

Watch the video here

The planning board

Demos are interesting. I am trying to talk about what I am thinking. Sometimes I can't keep up with myself! And sometimes a painting needs me to step back and look at it....something I don't do during a demo especially one being filmed!  So as promised I took some time to evaluate the painting and made some changes. Below I will explain what I did to finish.

The demo where I left it at the end of the video

• The painting had potential but on review I felt that it had too much going on. The bright yellow tree competed with the busy foreground patches and grasses. Sometimes it isn't what you put in but what you take away! So I simplified the foreground with some big bold strokes and a little workable fixative.

Simplified foreground

• I needed to find a way to lead the viewer through the grass and shrubs to the big yellow tree. I had another photo of this location that showed a creek. That's what I wanted! A simple ribbon of blue water as a leading line. I put in some blue strokes and continued to add grass and shrubs forcing myself to keep it simple.
• I refined the trees with some brighter yellows and a few linear marks for tree trunks. Finished!

That was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed the video and the finish. Perhaps you would like to try a similar landscape?  I have exciting news coming tomorrow. Here is a sneak peak.....I have a new page on patreon.com which will allow me to share more in depth instruction, videos, handouts and more. Check it out at www.patreon.com/karenmargulis . I will be adding a step by step demo and much more to this page.

A Cloud and Sky Refresher

'Under Sunny Skies'         16x20       pastel       ©Karen Margulis
available $350

As much as I love the close up world of the intimate landscape I am equally drawn to the drama of the sky. So when my private student asked for some sky and cloud tips I was excited to oblige. I gave her my condensed run down of my favorite tips for painting the sky and clouds and then put it together in the above demo painting.

I'd like to share one important tip that will help you paint more authentic and believable skies....skies and clouds that are air and gas....skies that have depth and clouds that float seamlessly in the sky.

STUDY THE SKY.

Go outside and look up. Take notes. Do a sketch. Even better do a pastel study. Look at the clouds and the sky and ask yourself descriptive questions....what colors, values, shapes, edges do I see? Make mental and physical notes of your answers. All  of this sky study will help you when it comes to painting the sky. 


You can get a refresher on painting the sky and clouds in pastel in my PDF demo available in my Etsy shop. I also have a video on YouTube on painting a cloudy sky.

First layer block in stage

Tip: Leave space for the big clouds! Block in the cloud shadows before the lights.

Mid stage. Time to evaluate and see where the clarity will be

A Brilliant Hack for Sorting Pastels

'Softly Goes the Day'            9x12       pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $145

I love teaching! Sometimes I learn just as much as I share. It was the case the last couple of days. I had the privilege of sharing with a wonderful artist and new friend form South Carolina. Linda came to my studio for a two day private session. I love having these in depth one on one workshops. Not only do we get the chance to cover a lot of material I have the opportunity to get to know the artist. 

And I learned much from Linda. I started a list of tips and ideas she shared with me but this one was the best!  When she arrived at my studio she was holding a round thing covered in tin foil. Did she bring cookies I wondered? I was intrigued and quite surprised when she removed the foil to reveal a wonderful tray of pastels!  

I thought it was interesting and very pretty but I didn't immediately see the brilliant solution she had for sorting and bringing her pastels to my class.

I love this hack for sorting pastels!

On closer inspection I saw that she was using the sections of a catering tray as a color wheel!

• The tray was a sturdy multi compartment tray from the deli department of the grocery store. (she had thrown away the lid before she thought of this hack)
• A Pocket Color Wheel fit perfectly in the center of the tray.
• The sections were lined with paper toweling.
• Using the color wheel as a guide the pastels were sorted by color, value and temperature. 
• The lighter value pastels were placed at the wide end and were arranged by value to the darkest pastels at short end of each section.
• The color wheel serves as a guide for each section. 
• The pure colors and neutrals are kept together. Though the center could be used for the neutrals.

Closeup of the green and yellow section

I love this hack because it makes use of a relatively easy to find tray. Here are some more reasons to try this hack.

•  It is a great way to sort and organize pastels without the expense of a box. I like it even though I have a box. It would make an efficient working pastel tray for the studio. It isn't that practical for travel unless you are driving to and from class.

• Taking time to organize your pastels in this manner is a great way to see what you need. You can see what colors, temperature and values you are missing and then make a list to order open stock or a set that has the missing pastels.

A big thank you to Linda for sharing this idea with me. I hope you find it as helpful as I do!

Today's Painting notes: This is a 9x12 pastel on Moonstone Canson Mi-Teintes paper. This is one of the demos I painted for this class.

When Color Takes a Back Seat

'Drama on the Marsh'          4x6        pastel        ©Karen Margulis

Why didn't I think of it! I had a great question from a reader who asked if I tried doing a black and white painting on Uart Dark. I didn't. With pastels sometimes we are so focused on color that we forget about the subtle beauty of a simple black and white image.  I was waiting for a private student to arrive so I decided to try a quick black and white study.

I keep a small box of black, white and gray pastels. The grays are what I call ash gray....made from black and white. They are not the wonderful colorful grays found in some pastels sets. These are the typical grayscale grays. I use them to illustrate how using darks, lights and grays with COLOR will lead to more interesting paintings. They would be perfect for my little study!

a variety of black and white pastels

I selected a moody photo of clouds over a marsh. It would translate well into black and white. There was a good range of values and shapes. The black paper gave me a head start because I didn't have to fight the paper color to get my dark shapes solid and cohesive. If you look at the painting you can see the paper color in the bottom left corner. Click to enlarge.

see the paper color in the bottom left corner.

After I finished the black and white study I painted another version this time using the local colors I saw in the photo. I really enjoyed the simplicity of the black and white version. Having to choose only value and not worry about color freed me to play with mark making and enjoying the process of painting.

Another version with colorful darks,lights and grays

Exploring Wet Underpaintings on Uart Dark

'Autumn Mosaic'         9x12       pastel on Uart Dark       ©Karen Margulis
available $165

 There is something very satisfying about wet underpaintings. Holding a brush and watching pastel melt and drip or moving wet paint around the surface is also very liberating. Even if I end up covering the underpainting with pastel, the act of creating the underpainting feels great.

I probably do some kind of wet underpainting for half of my paintings. I love all types of wet underpaintings from simple alcohol washes to experimenting with unexpected media such as oil paint or oil pastel crayons. I love using Uart paper because I have good results with these wet underpaintings. So I was anxious to try a wet underpainting on the new Uart Dark. I am happy to report that it passed all of my tests with flying colors!

Putting Uart Dark to the wet underpainting test

For the test I used an unmounted piece of Uart Dark 500 grade. I used both water and alcohol and a variety of media. My main concern was how the paper would hold up. My results:

• The unmounted paper was taped on four corners to a piece of foam core board. It did not buckle or wave or wrinkle when wet with both water and alcohol. The liquid did not seep through to the back of the paper. 

• The sanded surface retained the grit. The water and alcohol did not make the paper gummy or remove the grit.

In my tests the Uart Dark performed the same as regular Uart sand color. 

Blocking in color with Caran d'Ache Neocolors II crayons

 Continuing my experiment I used a piece of Uart Dark 500 grade and did a wet underpainting using Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons and water. I liked how the Neocolors stayed vibrant in my test. They didn't disappoint me. The allowed me to block in the big shapes of my composition and set up the color. The underpainting provided me with a roadmap. The Uart Dark performed flawlessly.

In the end I covered up much of the underpainting with pastel. There is nothing wrong with that! Even though it is desirable to let underpaintings show or peek through it isn't the end of the world if it gets covered. The underpainting was an icebreaker....it was a set up and allowed me to start the painting without fear and hesitation!

Wet with water

Blocking in the darks once underpainting has dried

Painting the sky and all of the dull colors....brighter colors to come!

Read more about Uart paper on their website here:http://uartpastelpaper.com/products/

A Closer Look at a Great New Paper

'Under the Summer Sun'       12 x 9      pastel  on Uart Dark 800      ©Karen Margulis
available $165

The first thing I did with the new paper was to paint on it. I wanted simply to respond to it without overthinking.  Next I put it to my paper test. I was more deliberate and analytical. I tested how the paper responds to harder pastels vs. softer pastels. I also did a layer test. I wanted to find out how many layers the paper would take. Finally I painted the same thing using the same pastel palette on each of the 4 grades of paper. I've been playing with the new Uart dark sanded pastel paper this week and having a great time!  Below are my results.

All 4 test paintings together in a canva.com collage

My test strip. Click to enlarge for detail

• How dark is it?  The paper is called Uart Dark and the level of darkness varies according to the grade of the paper. The two lower grades (rougher) 400 and 500 are the darkest.They are considered black. The 600 grade is slighter lighter and is called dark charcoal. The finest grade 800 is called charcoal and is slightly lighter. The higher the grade, the smaller the pigments are. I find the variation in darkness to be so slight and subtle that it made no difference at all in my paintings. 

• How do pastels perform on Uart dark? The good news is that both hard and softer pastels perform EXACTLY THE SAME on the dark paper as they do on regular Uart sand color paper. Pastels go on easily and layer well.  There is no struggle to get pigment from even the hardest pastels. You get the benefit of the consistency of the Uart you love with the new dark color.  I truly forgot I was working on black because the paper felt so familiar to me. 

• How many layers does Uart Dark take?  I put each grade to the layer test. I used my box of 30 Terry Ludwig yellows and started layering. I used my usual light touch. I got to 26 layers without a problem. I layered dark over light and light over dark. I was able to build layers without the pastel completely filling the tooth of the paper and getting slippery. I could have added more layers but more than likely we don't really need to use more than 26 layers! A painting would probably loose freshness. It's good to know that the paper can take it though!

• What is the difference in the various grades? Besides the subtleness in the darkness of the grade there is also a difference in the amount of grit or roughness. Think of how regular sandpaper is graded from smooth to rough. I found that I didn't paint differently on the various grades and my results are similar. Click on the photos below to enlarge. The smoother paper does allow one to get finer detail. The rougher paper allows for more suggested texture. I like all grades and again found them to be the same as regular Uart sand color paper.

Final thoughts: I love the new dark paper. I will still use the sand color Uart and choose my paper color depending on the subject. I love having choices and having a dependable and consistent paper to choose from!  NEXT UP: testing wet underpaintings on Uart dark.

Today's Painting Notes: The painting at the top of the post was done on Uart dark 800. I chose to blend the sky to eliminate the bits of black peeking through. I wanted a calm sky to contrast with my busy weeds!

Two Important Reasons to Try Dark Paper.... A First Look at Uart Dark

'Daisies'         4x6       pastel       ©Karen Margulis

 Keep those great questions coming! The next few days will be devoted to my tests on the new Uart Dark sanded paper. Your questions are helping me put the paper to the test!  Before we explore dark paper any further let's address the question of why would we want to work on dark paper in the first place!  There are many reasons artists like black or dark toned paper but my favorite reasons are VIBRANCY and CONTRAST.

My pastel palette on a black cloth. Look at how vibrant they look!

•  VIBRANCY. Look at how bright and intense the pastels in the above photo appear on a black surface. This same level of vibrancy can be achieved on a black or dark surface. Pastels glow and come to life on a dark surface. Because the paper is black or dark....the lights and brights appear even lighter and brighter than they would on a lighter surface. (simultaneous contrast at work) 
• TIP: When choosing a subject to paint on black choose something that will exploit the ability of the dark paper to make light and bright colors pop. Subjects such as flowers are wonderful candidates for black paper. 

New paper leads to new explorations! Uart Dark comes in
four grades: 400, 500, 600, 800
available at Dakota Art Pastels

• CONTRAST: Black or dark paper can lead to stronger paintings. The dark tone provides the glue that holds everything together. It provides the much needed contrast with the middle and light values. If handled well the back paper can help unify shapes and prevent spottiness. I like to block in a painting with simple shapes of 2-4 values. These big areas of light and dark form the foundation for the detail and colors to follow. Working on a dark paper ensures that my darks are strong enough. (often we are afraid of pushing the darks too far and we end up with disjointed and weak paintings)

• TIP: The Uart dark paper is dark but there are some pastels, notably the Terry Ludwig eggplant which is actually darker than the paper. I like to use these 'super darks' with restraint as accents. This makes the dark paper a perfect overall dark allowing my accents to pop!

The photos below show the progression of today's painting. I have repeated the same painting with the same pastels on each grade of Uart Dark. I will share the results in tomorrow's post.

Blocking in the darks and starting some mid value green

Adding the bright yellow centers and the darkest accents.
See how they pop on the black paper!

Adding the lights using a pale blues

Painting a simple background of greens allowing the paper tone to peek through

Adding some warmer lights on the petals and a few details.

Finished painting on Uart Dark 500

As an experiment I painted the same daisies using the same pastel palette on regular sand color Uart. Can you see a difference? Did the black paper change the look of the painting? 

Painting on regular Uart 500 sand color