Throwing Paint on an Underpainting for Pastel

'Flower Power'            12 x 9            pastel            ©Karen Margulis
available $165

 It was time for a play date. I have been busing helping my kids move from Chicago to Georgia. Exciting times for us but that has left me only small bits of time in my studio with most of it being spent producing content for my Patreon Page  and blog. No time to play.

So today I set aside a few hours for me time in the studio. I have been wanting to experiment with textures in a wildflower meadow. I pulled out a white Pastel Premier mounted board and began building up layers for my underpainting

• I started with an alcohol wash with Art Graf pigment blocks. 
• While the Art Graf dried I sprayed some India into make droplets of black all over my meadow.
• I then took a blue Nupastel stick and drew linear marks though the underpainting.
• I wanted some white spots of color so I took some white acrylic paint and splattered my board with paint. This was messy but FUN!
• I found some Schminke gold powder and sprinkled some on the wet paint. 
• I took the palette knife and dragged it through the printmaking grass marks which I hoped would leave indentations in the paint. 
• Will a final spritz of black ink I left the underpainting to dry. 

Here is the finished underpainting. The Pastel Premier board help up to the abuse!

After the underpainting was dry I began to layer soft pastels. I used Terry Ludwig pastels with a few extras beside my Floral Landscape set. The textured underpainting was mostly covered with pastels but it definitely added some interest to what could have been a big boring and empty foreground!

Beginning the pastel layering