Seeing Pictures Emerge: Fun with Scrap Paper

'Autumn in Maine'            8x10          pastel         ©Karen Margulis
available $145

 I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with this piece of scrap Uart paper. It was actually a nice piece that I had mounted so I really needed to use it. But it was covered with some demo clouds. I had used the piece to show a student some tips for painting clouds. I usually brush out something like this but I had a different idea for this one.

A scrap piece of Uart used to show cloud painting tips

I took a piece of pipe insulation foam and rubbed in the pastel. I softened the blue sky and cloud marks. It morphed into an interesting and soft flow of color. I stared out it for awhile and slowly an image began to emerge. I saw the sky and some golden sand. I saw the shape of the water and even some tree shapes. It was exciting to imagine the painting that might come of these shapes!

I could have simply painted from my imagination. But I was reminded of a scene I had seen on my recent trip to the Maine coast. I pulled out my photos and found the one I remembered. It was an eerie match! I eagerly used a Nupastel to draw in the big shapes. 

Drawing the new picture with a piece of Nupastel

 Since I was working on mounted Uart sanded paper I decided to pump up the values and colors with an alcohol wash underpainting. I used some of my new Derwent Inktense sticks (more on this later) with some rubbing alcohol and a stiff brush and waited for the underpainting to dry.

Adding some color with Inktense sticks and an alcohol wash

 I worked on the painting slowly building the layers beginning with the darks and then moving from the sky down to the rocky ground. It was fun to pull a painting from the mysterious leftovers on a piece of scrap paper!