New Pastel Demo Video: A Spring Landscape Painting

'Spring Magic'           9x12         pastel         ©Karen Margulis
available $150

It's spring and by popular request my latest video is a spring landscape.  I begin the painting with a watercolor underpainting and build layers using my new Great American pastel set ( 91 half stick Richard McKinley Landscape) You can see the video demo through a special sneak peek on my Patreon page. I'd like to share the demo with everyone who reads my blog. I appreciate your support and hope you enjoy the video.

click here to view the demo on my Patreon page
click here for the direct link to YouTube

My reference photo and quick color study

The painting at the end of the video

After the video ended I took a break and came back to the painting with fresh eyes. I added a few finishing touches.

• I refined the pink tree with more sky holes and I added some hints of pink behind the trees on the left.
• I added some brighter spring green leaf marks to the trees.
• I refined the yellow flowers in the foreground using them to lead the viewer into the painting.
• I added some lighter and brighter green behind the tree line to add more depth to the landscape.

I hope you enjoyed the video demo and your sneak peek at my Patreon page. I hope that you will consider joining us! www.patreon.com/karenmargulis

Painting a Dogwood Tree in Three Easy Steps

'The Queen of Spring'            8x10            pastel              ©Karen Margulis
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My dogwood trees won't bloom. They are about five years old and every spring I hope they will but so far nothing but nice green leaves.  I will have to be satisfied with painting dogwoods in bloom. Flowering trees can be a challenge to paint. They are like giant bouquets of flowers.....plenty of details to get caught up in. It is so easy to get carried away and end up with a tree covered in dots and blobs of color.

I have simplified my dogwood trees into three easy steps.

1.  Paint the trunks. Dogwoods have trunks with character. The are lyrical and irregular. I use a dark blue or purple pastel and draw some lyrical painterly lines for the trunks. I make sure they get thinner as they get taller.

2. Block in the MASS OF FOLIAGE. I treat the flowers as a mass. I don't paint individual blooms. I put down the darkest colors I see in the mass. The flowers are typically a creamy white to pink. They may appear pure white especially against the dark backdrop of the woods....but the flowers are not really pure white.

I didn't use pure white for my flowers. I started with violets and dull greens of a medium value. As I developed the masses I used lighter values such as pale yellows and pinks. I also develop the background at the same time using the background colors to carve away at the flower masses making sky holes.

3. Refine the Tree. I continue to add lighter and lighter values to the flower masses. I am still keeping the large masses intact. I am careful to leave some of the dark showing. I am trying to create the form of the trees. I also work on the foreground bushes and add a few hits of azaleas.

Since I am working on Canson paper and I don't have a lot of tooth, I decide to use some workable fixative so I could build more layers. I finish the tree with some dancing flower shapes...these are my brightest and heaviest marks. I place them carefully so that they move they eye around the painting. I don't paint every flower. I want to leave something to the viewer's imagination.

The pastels I used for the dogwood blossoms

My initial block in...keeping shapes simple

Beginning to add the lighter values and creating volume in the tree

 Besides painting dogwoods I spent the day at the computer making my first installment of my video blog or vlog. I plan to share it tomorrow so don't miss my premiere!

Monday Pastel Demo....Spring Landscape on Textured Board

'Forsythia Woods'             8x10           pastel              ©Karen Margulis
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Forsythia is pure joy. There is not an ounce, not a glimmer of sadness or even knowledge in forsythia. Pure, undiluted, untouched joy.  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Painting has something in common with forsythia. It is pure joy. I enjoyed painting today's demo. I hope you enjoy seeing  my process. I am working today on a textured board. It is an 8x10 piece of gatorboard that I applied a pumice and gesso mix in random brushstrokes. The mixture was tone with yellow liquid acrylic paint. I love working on this surface and I need to make some more soon!

I begin by choosing the pastels I will use for the painting and lining them up in my working tray. I then do a loose drawing with compresses charcoal.

For the next step I block in the dark shapes using dark purples and greens. I then block in the distant foliage and trees with some muted pinks and greens.

Next I block in the shadow shapes on the path and grass. I reinforce the shapes of the tree trunks with the charcoal. I want to make sure they are interesting shapes and have a varied spacing between them.

Time to block in the sky. I choose a pale warm blue and use this sky color to break up the tree shapes.

 In these two photos I am working on the grasses and path. I have also put in some of the thinner branches.

Now I am working on the last layers.  I add some bright green to the sunlit areas in the grass. I also start to develop the big forsythia bush in the foreground.  I want it to appear unruly and textured.  The texture of the prepared surface helps. I want more though. I spray it a couple of times with fixative and add more layers of yellow pastel.

Finally I add some highlights to the trees and some more branches. I then took a very soft Schminke pastel and added the brightest yellows to the forsythia bush. Click on the photo to enlarge it so you can see the texture of the board up close.

Why We Need to Seek Out Feedback

'In All Her Glory'                8x10            pastel              ©Karen Margulis
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Sometimes it is a simple bit of advice.  A few words. "Try this next time or look more carefully at that."   Something simple that you may have overlooked or maybe didn't even know. It doesn't matter how much experience we have. As artists, we are always learning and growing.  We need to continue studying and stretching ourselves. We need insightful feedback.

"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience." Oliver Wendell Holmes

 This is one of the reasons that I love taking workshops. I might just hear that one simple bit of advice that can make a big difference in my work. (I also love being around other artists who are all passionate about learning to paint better) 

I am taking a couple of workshops this year... Liz Haywood-Sullivan in May and Iceland with Stan Sperlak in June.  I can't wait to learn more and to get some feedback. Feedback is so important because we can't always see what we could be doing better.  It often takes another set of eyes.

Critique or feedback is one of the valuable benefits of a class or workshop. Having someone look at your work and honestly share their own insight is invaluable.  You don't always have to agree or you might not understand or be ready for the advice. This has happened to me often. I always take the feedback and file it away. Some I put it to practice right away and some advice might not be a fit for me....or might start to make sense at some point in the future.

I am fortunate to be able to take workshops and to have a great support system of local artist friends. It is worth the effort to seek out other artists in your area. Take a class or join a local art association. Often they offer critique sessions. Start your own critique group!  Or turn to the internet....when I was getting started with pastels I spent a lot of time in the pastel forum of wetcanvas.com.  I  posted my work for feedback and learned from other work posted. It is a great resource!

I understand the value of insightful feedback and I would love to offer another set of eyes for your work. Whether you are new to pastels or wanting to improve your work, consider my new online feedback sessions. Conducted by email, I will offer feedback on up to 3 paintings. Click here for more information or feel free to email me with additional questions. 

Tips for Painting the Spring Landscape

'Azalea Path' 11x14 pastel ©Karen Margulis

Purchase this painting here $150

Every Spring I am faced with the same challenge.... How to capture the beauty of the Spring landscape successfully in my paintings. In an earlier post I discussed the challenges we have in trying to paint the Spring landscape. Read more here. Today I'd like to share some things that have helped me meet the challenge.

1. Do some advance planning. Do thumbnails to help you SIMPLIFY the busy Spring landscape.
2. Decide on a FOCAL AREA and develop it while leaving other areas with less detail. This is especially important when trying to paint flowering trees and shrubs....simplify the background by using colors in the same value so that they are soft and out of focus.
3. Try to focus in on one area of the landscape rather than trying to fit in all of the excitement into one painting. Plan on doing several paintings instead.
4. Try to zero in on one bush, flower or branch for a more intimate view of Spring.
   

'Golden Delight' 5x7 pastel

Here the focus is on the forsythia bush so I downplayed the pink blooming trees in the background by making them into soft pink shapes with no hard edges.

'Cherry Grove' 5x7 pastel

In this painting there is a grouping of cherry trees in bloom. They were all fighting for attention so I chose to emphasize just one tree. I put the most details in the center tree and downplayed the others. I also made the background trees which were very busy...into soft-edged shapes. I also used duller cooler colors to push the background into the distance.

Next I will talk about the wonderful colors of Spring. Be sure to come back for the next installment. If you haven't already, I invite you to sign up on the sidebar to receive blog updates.
Thanks for visiting!

What I Like About Fixative on Pastels

'The Magic of Spring' 8x10 pastel ©Karen Margulis

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To Fix or not to Fix.....that is the question I am often asked. The answer is that I never use fixative on a finished painting. When I am finished with a painting I give it a good whack on the backside which does a great job of removing any pastel dust or loose pastel. I tend not to be too heavy handed with my pastel application and the sanded papers I work on do an excellent job of grabbing onto the pastel. I have not experienced any problems with pastel dust so I just prefer not to spay fixative on my work. I have found that fixative tends to darken and dull my colors.

I have heard that the relatively new SpectraFix fixative doesn't alter the colors but I haven't used it myself so I can't really say. I welcome your comments if you have tried SpectraFix or any other fixative that doesn't darken colors. So you can probably tell that I am not a big fan of fixative. But I actually do LOVE fixative just not on a finished painting.

My Fixative Choices...Blair Workable Fixative and SpectraFix

I do like to use workable fixative during the painting process. I don't use it for every painting but it does come in handy sometimes. My preference is Blair Very Low Odor Workable Spray Fix (it still has a pretty strong odor so if I am working around others I take it outside)

• It is very useful to restore some tooth to an area of a painting that has been overworked. I brush out the area I am not happy with using a stiff brush then spray a little fixative.
• I love using fixative to create texture in an area of a painting. I will often build up some layers, spray it and let it dry and add more layers. The pastel over the fixative will have a grainy, textured look. I will repeat this process building more layers until I get the effect I want. See the close-up of today's painting below. The greens are applied over a fixed area and notice how the green pastel skips over the darker pinks creating texture.
• Fixative can be used like a glue to fix dusted areas of pastel in place. For today's painting, I sprayed the trees with workable fixative then shaved some pale value pastels on top. This pastel dust was rolled in place with a rolling pin and glassine paper.
  

close-up detail of azaleas

I'd love to hear your experience with fixatives. Do you fix or not? What other uses have you found for fixative?

The Challenges of Painting the Spring Landscape

'A Walk in the Woods' 8x10 pastel ©Karen Margulis

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Spring has arrived in the Southeast and it is a great time of year to be an artist! I love to paint the Spring landscape but it does have it's challenges. I have put together some thoughts about painting Spring and would like to share them in the next few posts. Let me begin with some of the characteristics of the Spring landscape.

• Color is everywhere but there is less contrast than in other seasons.
• Colors tend to be pale and warm: creams, pinks and yellow greens with bursts on intense colors in some flowers such as hot pinks,reds,corals and purples.
• New Spring growth can often resemble a paler softer version of Autumn colors.
• There are also some bright 'acid' intense greens that appear in the landscape.
• Soft edges of new growth can create an overall fuzziness and softness to the landscape.

Keeping these characteristics in mind the first thing I do when I want to paint the colors of Spring is select my pastels. I set aside a group of pastels that I will use for my Spring landscapes.

My Spring Landscape Pastel Palette

This is my Spring pastel palette. It is an assortment of Terry Ludwig, Great American and Diane Townsend pastels. If you want to paint bright intense blossoms it is important that you have these colors. You can't make them from other colors so you need to have those bright corals, fuchsias and hot pinks. (a good excuse for the Terry Ludwig Vibrant color set!) I balance these bright colors with the softer, paler, grayer colors such as peaches, mauves, yellow-greens. Finally I choose an assortment of greens from cooler to warm and I make sure to include some bright, acidy greens. These artificial looking greens actually make wonderful accents in a Spring landscape. I used this palette to paint today's painting of the dogwoods on bloom.

Since there is an overall lack of contrast in the Spring landscape it is easy to get paintings that appear washed out or wishy washy or dare I say too sweet! Tomorrow I will share some ideas for handling the challenges of painting the Spring Landscape.