It Came to Me in a Dream.....Painting Explorations

'Frozen in Time'               9x12            pastel            ©Karen Margulis            SOLD

 It came to me in a dream. I woke up with the idea for a painting and I couldn't wait to get into the studio to give it a try. I have had a reference photo in my pilfer a few years. I wanted to paint it but I wasn't sure how I would approach it. It was a winter scene. There is a park in Chicago that has a prairie garden. Some areas of this space are left alone so the spent blooms and tall grasses and wildflowers stand all through the winter. These dried grasses make the most interesting decorations in the winter landscape. But how could I capture their delicate forms with pastel?

I decided to do a two part set up. I began with a watercolor underpainting blocking in the warm and cool areas. I used a piece of Multimedia Artboard. It was an interesting surface for the watercolor in that it absorbed the paint and didn't allow spreading of the paint. It grabbed it and kept it in place. So as a result I didn't get any interesting drips and blooming of paint. But that is OK even though it was surprising. It really made an interesting underpainting and a good head start for the painting. Now for the addition of texture.

watercolor on Multimedia Artboard

I wanted to get the feeling of a tangle of lots of dried grasses and spent flowers. It needed to have a lot of depth and texture. I decide to add some clear gesso to the middle 'weedy' area as well as the snow in the foreground. The clear gesso applied with a stiff brush does the trick. 

Adding clear gesso to the areas where I want texture

Once the gesso dried I started adding pastel. The Multimedia Artboard gave an interesting texture in the sky but it was a lot smoother in the sky area compared to the weedy area with the gesso. It was the perfect solution! In the photo below you can see the painting midway through. It is completely blocked in. I took my time adding the dried wildflowers with the edge of a Nupastel. I also used some Nupastels to paint more grasses as well as negatively paint the orange sky behind the grasses. 

I really enjoyed seeing the painting come together....just as it did in my dream!

Midway through the painting.....ready for the details!