'Summertime' 8x10 pastel ©Karen Margulis |
I live in the 'Land of Green'. The Southeast is a beautiful part of the country especially if you like green. In the summer you will find every shade of green in the hills and trees. It can be a challenge to paint the summer landscape and make some sense of all the green. Of course with pastels we never think we have the right green no matter how many pastels we have. I encourage my students to find ways to make the greens they do have work for them. I'd like to share my favorite tip...Lay out your greens before you start painting.
The palette I used for 'Summertime' |
In the photo above you can see I have set aside some darks, some sky colors and some hay bale colors. I have also pulled my greens. I take the greens a step further and line them up as best I can by value and temperature. This helps me when I start painting a green landscape.
I know that generally the greens are cooler and lighter in the distance and get warmer and more intense as they come towards the foreground (there are always exceptions but this is true a good bit of the time) Now when I start painting the greens I can more easily see the cooler vs warmer and darker vs lighter greens.
When your green pastels are mixed in with all of your other colors it is harder to judge what kind of green it is. Putting them all together helps you see the temperature and value more easily. Now I can paint my meadows and trees more intuitively without having to hunt for the 'right' green.
My chart of meadow colors |
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