A Quick WIP Collage: Warm Light on a Marsh

'Great Beginnings'.         9x12               pastel           ©Karen Margulis
available $165

I wanted to capture the feeling of warm sunlight on the marsh. Where I was standing it was cold. In fact the ground was covered in frost. But the marsh was lit by the morning sun and it was making its way closer to me. I have painted a smaller study of this scene before but I wanted to go a bit larger. This version is 9x12 but I plan to go even larger. I took photos of my progress and put them in a collage. (www.befunky.com)

I decided that the best way to showcase the play between the warm sunlit areas and the cool frosty areas was to block in the painting with warm Nupastels for the sunny parts and cool Nupastels for the frosty and shadowed parts. This warm/cool block in gave me a road map to follow and really helped me push the warm /cool feeling. The warm tone of the paper also helped. (Wallis warm mist seconds)

To keep things simple I limited my palette to the Terry Ludwig red Rocks set of pastels. They were perfect for this painting and are not just for Red Rock Country!

What about the frost? In the small study I had attempted to paint the frosty foreground but it just didn't translate. It looked like water and then it looked too washed out. The painting needed the dark foreground to enhance the light so I kept it dark and simple and eliminated the frost.

I hope you enjoyed the little collage WIP. I have posted an in depth version over on my Patreon page today. www.patreon.com/karenmargulis