'Ending the Day with a Bang' 8x10 pastel ©Karen Margulis purchase painting $125 |
My terrible photo |
This was a bad photo. It's blurry and the colors are completely washed out. Good thing I was there and remembered what it looked and felt like. Now the fun begins. How to best express this scene. I liked the big shapes of the silhouetted trees so I decided to begin with an oil stain underpainting... Nice and wet and drippy! The perfect kind of underpainting when you don't have a good reference or don't want to copy your photo.
A wet underpainting allows us to respond with pastel in a more spontaneous way. We don't have to paint in the lines.
The oil stain underpainting |
The finished oil stain underpainting gave me big simple shapes and intense colors. It also gave me some interesting drips. I liked it. I knew I wouldn't have to do much with the pastel to keep this expressive mood that the underpainting created. It gave me the freedom to respond in a loose and expressive way....or as Richard McKinley says....The underpainting became my dance partner. I had fun dancing with this painting today.
3 comments:
Three cheers for spontaneity! Love the interpretation. Thanks for sharing the under painting and photo.
Hi Karen, what's an "oil stain" wet and drippy underpainting? I use watercolor or watersoluble crayons or watersoluble pencils--but what makes an "oil stain"?
Thanks Lisa!
Gayle it is simply oil paint thinned to the consistency of tea with Odorless Mineral spirits (turpenoid) Paint like watercolor.
Post a Comment