Happy Independence Day! And Thoughts on Painting New Subjects

'Taste of Summer'              9x12            pastel                ©Karen Margulis
available $175

 An idea popped into my head today and I had to drop everything and give it a try. I wanted to paint something in honor of summer and Independence Day. I wanted to use my new Floral Landscape set. BUT I didn't want to paint flowers. One of my goals for the set of pastels is to see how versatile my selections are. Have plans to paint many different subjects with the set. I know it is good for more than just flowers. So what about watermelon!?

Watermelon is the perfect summer motif. It actually isn't my favorite summer fruit. Give me a sweet juicy peach and I am in heaven. But I'll take some watermelon if it is sweet. But could paint watermelon? And more importantly could I paint watermelon with just my Floral Landscape set?

I found a very old reference photo. I attempted the watermelon back in 2005 without much success. This time I decided to do a watercolor underpainting. I used Cretacolor Aqua Briques on white Colourfix sanded paper. The underpainting gave me a good start.

Watercolor underpainting on white Art Spectrum Colourfix paper

I began the pastel application by blocking in the darks. I continued to build layers from dark to light and from big simple shapes down to the smaller details. It really wasn't any different than painting a floral landscape and the set had all the right colors and values.  That was fun!

I need to do this more often....pushing myself to paint things I don't usually paint. I love painting landscapes and wildflowers but I also need to explore other ways to interpret them. Perhaps moving away from them will allow me to return with fresh eyes!

Starting with the darks

Close up of the texture

Tha pastels in the Terry Ludwig Floral Landscape set