What You Need to Know about Watercolor Underpaintings for Pastel ...A Mini Demo

'Summer Loving' 5x7 pastel ©Karen Margulis

sold

Why bother with a watercolor underpainting? I am often asked why I would choose a watercolor underpainting for a pastel painting. For me it is the unpredictability of the watercolor. It is exciting to apply the paint and watch what it does. It drips and blooms and creates washes and new colors. All of these things create a more exciting base for my pastels. I can now respond to this underpainting and create a painting that has more of my input than if I just copied my reference photo. This wet, drippy underpainting frees me from the photo and allows me to truly interpret my subject. In yesterday's post I wrote about the supplies you will need. Now I would like to share some tips for a successful watercolor underpainting.

step by step demo of a watercolor underpainting

1. (top left) After a loose pencil sketch, I begin by putting in my dark value watercolors. I use a mix of dark blues, reds ,greens and oranges. This is opposite of usual watercolor technique but I want to be sure I get nice strong darks. (I have the painting upright on an easel)
2. (top right) Wait a few minutes for the darks to start drying. The paint doesn't have to be bone dry but you want it to loose the sheen. PATIENCE is the key. If you add more watercolor too soon it will drip onto your darks and wash them out. Now I add more color above the darks....I want some of this to drip.
3. Close-up of the two layers of watercolor. You can see the top layer beginning to drip onto the first layer. What will happen? This is the exciting part!
4. I need to wait and let this next layer lose it's sheen and start drying so I add some greens for the flowers. By chance a bead of paint formed at the base of each flower so I let these drip to become the stems. Fun!
5. I add some red flowers and let them drip.
6. Now the first layers that I applied are slightly wet so I draw into it with some green paint, I get some paint lifted and some stems. If it is too wet, this won't work. You can use a dry brush for texture of a spritz bottle for drops of water. I don't want to overdo the texture at this point.
7. Close-up of the flower heads. Now I patiently wait for everything to dry further. Again it doesn't have to be bone dry you want it almost dry so that when we wash in the sky, it won't erase the flowers. I add a pink wash for the sky.
8. Finished underpainting.

watercolor underpainting for an 18x24 pastel

Here is the finished underpainting. It is a large one for me 18x24. I will be working on the pastel application this week and I hope you will check back to see my progress. If I could give you only one tip for doing these w/c underpaintings it would be to have patience. I used to get very wimpy underpaintings because I was always in a rush to finish and so each wash of watercolor would erase the previous wash as it slid down the paper. Once I learned to let things get dry I have had better results!

Three Ways to Create Depth in Grasses

'Autumn Tangle'          7x5        pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $95

Oh the things that excite me! There could be a fantastic vista in front of me and my eye will wander and find the patch of dead weeds!  This is my favorite time of year for this motif. The time of year when the flowers of summer are spent. If I am lucky I find their remains in tangles of dried grasses. I love painting them and have become better at portraying the tangle of grasses and spent blooms.

As I worked on today's painting I thought of the things I do to help me paint the dead weeds and create depth in the weed patch. Here are three of my favorite tips:

1.  Build from large simple areas of pastel and gradually use smaller and more defined marks. I apply the pastel with the side of the stick creating 'washes' of color before painting a single blade of grass. When I build the layers of grass I use more detail on top of the flat areas of pastel. The thicker grasses are applied with a firm hand. I like to have bits and pieces and chunks of color to suggest the variation found in grasses.

2. Start with the darkest colors you see in the mass of grasses. It is always a good idea to work from dark to light with pastel and when building up a complex angel of grassy stuff it is best to have the darker layers down before adding the lighter colors. Add the bits and pieces of color as your final marks.

3. Try using workable fixative or a spritz of rubbing alcohol to darken and 'fix' the first layers. Then when the lighter colors are applied they will skip over the fixed areas revealing some texture that helps suggests grasses. I like to use Blair Low odor workable fixative. 

*Note: apply the fixative with a light spray keeping the spray can moving. Don't allow the surface to get too wet or it will be slick and not receptive to pastel.

Beginning to build the layers

A Tip for Painting a Very Busy Landscape

'Down in the Clover'             10x8         pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $175

I've decided I like my meadows wild and free. The more tangled and out of control the more I intrigued I am. It isn't easy to paint though. I don't want to totally tame it but I also don't want to get lost in the busyness of the scene. We know it is important to simplify. But how do you simplify and still keep the feeling of the freedom of the flowers and grasses of the meadow? The answer is easy.

Paint the flowers and grassy stuff last.

Too often we get excited about the colorful flowers and interesting shapes and textures of the grasses. We rush to put them into our painting. The problem we run into is that the flowers are not anchored.....they are floating on an unfinished background. We then have to add all of the grassy stuff and before we know it we have a overly complicated overworked painting.

In today's painting I simplified the busy meadow by painting the big simple shapes of the background first....the trees and the dirt. Scroll down to see the progress shots.

my reference photo....another Maine summer meadow

block in of the big shapes using three values

Staring with the trees and the sky

midway through the painting

Once I have painted the background trees and sky I spend time working on the grass underlayer. Notice I don't paint the detailed grasses and leaves yet. Instead I paint some purple dirt color and green grass color all with big broad strokes. I also start to indicate the shape and color of the flowers.

Then and only then will I  put in the details of the grasses and flowers. I use harder pastels for these calligraphic marks. I am free to put in as much detail as I want. For today's painting I decided to put in more detail in the grasses than I usually do and had a great time!

close up

Painting notes: 10x8 art paper that I toned medium brown with thin acrylic paint.

The Joy of Revisiting Old Subjects

'Jewels of the Meadow'         11x9        pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $150

Do you remember photo albums? Perhaps you still print your photos and put them in an old school album. I haven't done that in years! Instead of albums I have been making books with my photos when I get around to it. I love the books but there is something special about looking at memories in a photo album.

I am finding all kinds of treasure in my studio clean up. Today I came across a photo album of a family trip to Nantucket and Maine. It might be the last 'real' photo album I put together. It was the last family trip we took before the kids went off to college. We would take a big road trip every summer and saw much of the USA together. For this last trip we let the kids decide where to go and they chose to return to Maine.

an old school photo album! That's us in the photo on the left.

 I flipped through the album enjoying the memories of a wonderful trip. There were a few photos that I had already used as painting references. But it had been awhile....12 years ago when I was new to painting! In fact one of them was probably the first wildflower painting I ever tried. I decided to revisit this old friend and paint it again.

Reference photo for today's painting

• It was fun to see that I enjoyed the same point of view in my old photos....looking up through the grass! I was able to relax and enjoy this subject and put to use the things I have learned over the last 12 years.

• I knew that I needed to override the information in the photos this time to create the illusion of depth. I made the distant trees lighter and cooler than they were in the photo. I adjusted the greens in the grass using lighter duller greens in the distance.

• I had fun designing the placement of the flowers to create a visual pathway back into the distance. When I first painted this scene I was very literal and copied the flowers exactly as they appeared in the photo.

•  I was also able to use new and better supplies. I didn't have the wonderful Yi Cai pastel paper or the selection of pastels that I now have. A combination of Terry Ludwig and Diane Townsend pastels made painting a pleasure. I was able to achieve the marks I wanted because of my tools. 

closeup detail

Even though I have painted this scene before there are many more photos in this album that I have not yet painted. Looking at them brings back great memories that I would love to paint!  

Do you have an old photo album filled with treasures? Would they be inspiration for new paintings? 

painting notes: 11x9 on Yi Cai sanded pastel paper with an assortment of Terry Ludwig, Diane Townsend and Nupastels for the grasses.

How to Have Success on a Textured Surface

'Summer Perfection'       16x10        ©Karen Margulis
available $185

The Big Summer Cleanup begins today. My studio has been sadly neglected. It has been a busy year so far and things have gotten out of control. I have paper and pastels and supplies spread out everywhere and I need to get it organized. 

I started moving things around this morning and found a nice textured board that I made and never used. It was an odd size 16x10 but I knew it would be perfect for a painting I had in mind. 

The Great Cleanup quickly came to a halt so that I could paint while the inspiration was fresh. That's OK. I'll start cleaning in the afternoon.

The first layer with the distracting white bits

 The surface I found is a piece of mat board that I covered with a mixture of gesso and powdered pumice with a little bit of water to make the concoction the consistency  of cream of wheat. I spread it on with a cheap brush. I enjoy using random brushstrokes.  I love working on a textured surface but sometimes the texture is challenging to work with.

You can see in the photo above that the pastel skips over the grooves created by the pumice mixture brushstrokes.  The white board is showing all over and that bothers me. I could just keep layering pastels and eventually the white would get covered. But I risk making mud. So instead I RUB in the first layer.

The first layers rubbed in and ready for more pastel

I used a piece of pipe insulation foam to push the first layer of pastel into the grooves of the board. In the photos above you can see the difference the rubbed in layer makes. No more distracting white or light paper spots.  My texture what quite rough so I added a second layer of pastel and rubbed it in as well. The next step was to add fresh pastel. I did not do anymore blending or rubbing.

The pastel will still skip over the grooves but now there is color in the grooves. It works especially well in areas of grass. The textured surface gives the illusion of grassiness without the distraction of the light color surface showing.  Have a look at the close ups photos below to see the effects of the texture.

If you are working on a very light colored surface with texture it is a good idea to tone it or push the first layer of pastel into the grooves of the texture.

New You Tube Video Demo Neocolor II Underpainting

'Garden Party'         8x8           pastel         ©Karen Margulis
available $145 click here to purchase

I've been having so much fun! Since I discovered the possibilities with underpaintings using Caran'Ache Neocolor II crayons I can't stop painting!  I decided that it would be a good topic for my Sunday Studio video demo. If you missed the live broadcast on Facebook you can watch the video on my Youtube channel. Be sure to subscribe so you can be notified whenever I add a new video! Here is the link:

https://youtu.be/IezryivPIts

The underpainting for the second painting on the right....Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons with water

 The Neocolor II crayons are actual a water soluble oil pastel. They explode with color when wet. If you have missed my two previous posts about using these crayons click here to read more.

 I hope you have enjoyed following along with my weekend fun with underpaintings. I can't wait until next week's Friday Fun!

my messy palette!

Trying a HOT Underpainting...The Fun Continues

'A Beautiful Tangle'          8x10        pastel       ©Karen Margulis
available on Etsy $165

I am officially hooked. It doesn't take much to get me excited and these little Caran d'Ache crayons have done the trick. I am having so much fun creating underpaintings with them and thanks to your suggestions I am branching out and exploring even more!

My friend and wonderful artist Robert Sloan commented on yesterday's post and I am sharing what he said because he has some great ideas for using the Caran d'Aches Neocolor II crayons.

"I love these crayons. I have a large set of them and a 15 color pocket kit, they work well wet or dry. One thing I found delightful with them is that the colors are generally opaque, which makes them very different from using transparent watercolors for underpainting or sketching. This makes it possible to block in value areas on pastel paper with light or bright colors over black, so the entire painting can really pop! Many wet underpainting techniques don't work as well on dark colors because of transparency, but these rule for it.
I liked doing paintings on black with white or light accents, high tone difference with rich blacks and darks. For underpainting the light areas with white, a white Neocolor II is perfect. They can also go on by brush just using them like a watercolor pan, same as using gouache."

So here is what was next on the easel. I decided to go hot and bold!

My HOT underpainitng using the Neocolor II crayons

I took out another piece of UArt 400 grit paper for my next experiment. My reference photo was a closeup of a summer prairie garden. It was filled with a tangle of green with a few flowers. It was primarily a cool scene with all of the green. I wanted to add some excitement and infuse the scene with warm sunlight. I decided to go warm and bold with the underpainting.

I only have a limited selection of Neocolors (I need to remedy this) so I used orange and yellow for the background and the local colors of red violet and blue violet for the flowers. I used a wet wash with water to liquify the color. It remained bold and vibrant. I took out the purple crayon and scribbled  on the flowers right on the wet paper. You can see the scribble marks in the photo above.

The first few layers before creating more clarity in the flowers

 Once the underpainting was dry I was ready to add pastel. I wanted to be sure to let some of the HOT underpainting colors to peek through my tangle of green. I'm happy to say that I used restraint and succeeded. It was then just a matter of building the flowers and adding clarity and detail. What a fun way to start a painting!

Caran d'Ache Neocolor II in use

I am going to TRY to do a new video demonstrating the Neocolor II underpainting on Sunday around noon. I'll post it when I am finished.

Using a Palette Knife with Pastels

'Mountain Magic'         18x24         pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $375

 I sometimes crave it. I do what I can to achieve it. Texture. It comes so easily with oil and acrylic paint. It is harder to get the same effect with pastel. There is a trade off of course. Pastel excels at pure luminosity. But sometimes I want more texture in my pastel paintings. So I have to get creative.

Today I was craving some texture in the foreground of my painting when I spotted my old palette knife on the shelf. How could I use a palette knife with pastels?

Using a palette knife

I was working on an older painting that I uncovered in my archives. It actually was one of the demos I did at the last IAPS convention. Since I am in full on wildflower mode I thought it would be fun to add the finishing touches to the demo.

• I already had quite a few layers of pastel in the foreground grassy areas of the painting. I took the palette knife and I scratched through these layers revealing the dark underpainting. I kept scratching using windswept strokes. My goal was to suggest movement of the grasses.

• The next step was to use a bit of workable fixative and then to go over the grass with another layer of green pastel. The pastel didn't go into the grooves created by the palette knife which created real texture! Ahhhh I had some texture in the grass with a simple tool....the palette knife!

Close up of the texture in the grass. Click to enlarge

 There are other ways to create texture with pastels. You can make a textured support using a variety of materials such as pumice and gesso and pastel grounds by Golden and others. Do you have any technique for creating texture with pastels? I'd love to hear about them!

New Sunday Studio Video...Painting a Wildflower Meadow

'Among the Thistles'           12x24          pastel         ©Karen Margulis
available $300

It was a great Mother's Day.  I got to do my favorite things.....poking around thrift stores and painting! I found some good art and travel books in the thrift store and got a chance to spend the afternoon in the studio. I decided to do a Facebook Live broadcast to share the development of today's painting 'Among the Thistles'.  You can see the video on my You Tube channel here:

                                                     https://youtu.be/UPL2gpyp5UI

Here are a few details of the painting to give you some background:

• I am using Uart paper 500 grit that I cut into a 12x24 piece. I taped the piece to a piece of foamcore. I wanted a long and narrow piece of paper to capture this little slice of a meadow.
• I did an alcohol wash underpainting with Derwent Inktense sticks and rubbing alcohol.
• I used Terry Ludwig pastels mostly the Richard McKinley landscape set.
• I used Blair Low odor workable fixative to build the layers of the grass.
• I added the bumblebees at the very end of the painting using just a few simple marks.

I hope you enjoy the video. It is unedited in a very informal format but just imagine you are a fly on the wall of my studio watching me paint!

close up detail

A Tip for Painting Bluebonnets

'Celebrate Spring'         5x7        pastel        ©Karen Margulis

 I am headed to the Texas Hill Country for my 3rd annual plein air workshop. Last year I had the honor of co-teaching with Marsha Savage. We stopped in Dripping Springs on our way to the Plein Air Convention. That was a great adventure!  This year I am on my own but I am looking forward to painting and sharing in this beautiful part of the country.

I am tuning up my pastel box making sure I have a good selection for the Hill Country and I painted  this small study to test my selection.  I took some photos of the progress so you can see how I build up a field of Bluebonnets.

THINK BIG BEFORE GOING SMALL

Look at the first layer of the painting below. Do you notice anything unusual?

The first layer rubbed in with pipe insulation

The bluebonnets are not a very big or tall flower so I need to be careful to avoid getting too spotty when I paint them. To do this I think BIG. I choose the color of the flower which is a blue to blue violate and I paint a large blue shape where I want the patch of flowers.  Paint the mass before painting the individual flowers.

Adding the grass on top go the blue mass

I develop the painting by working on the trees in the distance and then I am ready to lay in the grass. Starting in the distance I choose a light and cooler green. I gradually use a more intense brighter green for the middle ground. As I approach the mass of bluebonnets I add touches of the green in and around the blue shape. This gives the illusion of a patch of blue flowers peeking through the grass.

Adding some cooler grass in the shadows and some violets to the blue mass

The final step is to go SMALL. It is time to paint a few of the blooms. I want to paint an impression of the filed of bluebonnets so it is not necessary to paint every bloom. I just need to paint a few and I put them where I want the viewer's eye to look. They become and important part of the design and help lead the eye into the distance.

Refreshing an Old Painting...Behind the Scenes

'At the Forest Edge'          8x10         pastel        ©Karen Margulis
available $150

 It had good bones. There were things I liked but there were also many things that I didn't really like. I came across the older daisy painting hiding in a pile of unfinished and discarded works. I must have abandoned it in frustration a few years ago. But several years of daily painting have given me the tools I needed to refresh and revive this daisy painting.

I brushed off some of the pastel simplifying the painting and allowing me to address some of the issues that were now obvious to me.

The painting before a refresher

Here is a list of the issues I saw and what I did to fix them. The result was a much fresher and expressive painting....more to my liking.

• There was nothing holding the flowers. They seemed to be floating on a bed of green. I added some darks underneath the grass to provide better structure.

• The background trees had too many details. The dark tree trunks and branches were too dark and didn't make sense. I simplified these trees and got rid of the branch marks.

• The sky was too dark. I used a lighter value blue and cream to brighten the sky.

• The flowers were just ok. I didn't like how they were placed. The four in the middles were all the same size and formed a square. I brushed them out and rearranged them. I also brightened them up a bit.

• The grasses were too stiff and what's up with the vine cutting through the middle of the painting?  I got rid of the vine and created more lyrical grasses.

• I love purple but I wasn't enjoying the purple flowers. They looked like blobs. I vaguely recall adding them in frustration when I last worked on this painting. It was time for them to go. Instead I added a few subtle dots of violet and yellow to hint at other wildflowers in this patch.

After the brush off  and the new placement of daisies

Try this: Pull out a painting that you did at least 5 years ago that you were not happy with. If you haven't been painting that long pull out one of your older ones (even if it isn't that old!)  Challenge yourself to find at lease one thing that you now see is wrong or could be done better. Brush it off and give it a refresher!

A Fun Discovery leads to a New Painting

'Before the First Snow'           8x10      pastel         ©Karen Margulis
available $250

The past couple of days haven't exactly been fun. I was in the middle of studio cleanup so I already had a mess on my hands. As I was walking into my garage/storage room I noticed a puddle. I cursed under my breath at the cat or dog who decided to make a bad decision. But as I cleaned up the puddle the water kept coming. It was seeping under the bookcase. It could only be coming from one place.....the hot water heater!  Fortunately I was home and caught it just in time to turn the water off.

Repairs are underway but a shelf of supplies had to be moved and a storage closet emptied. All of this adding to the mess I had already made. I have to get everything cleaned up and organized before my studio workshop next week! Sometimes making a mess can be good though. I made a fun discovery!

A Vintage piece of Wallis Belgian Mist paper

 In a pile of used foam core boards I found a pristine piece of Wallis sanded paper taped to the board all ready to go. I wasn't planning on painting today but that wonderful piece of paper called to me. Should I wait? Should I savor it? Do I have something worthy to paint? I didn't pay attention to the voices in my head that told me to wait. I pulled out a photo from my favorite place in Chicago and got to work. It was a fun diversion from the clean-up!

the block in with Nupastels

Wallis Belgian Mist was a favorite paper of mine when it was available. I enjoyed the gray tone of the paper and the perfect grittiness to the sanded surface. My prairie meadow didn't need an underpainting so I blocked in a few shapes with Nupastels and rubbed them in with a piece of pipe insulation foam.

close up

I knew that my set of Terry Ludwig's Shades of nature set would be perfect for the early December landscape. The colors in the prairie meadow were the muted colors of late autumn. A few dried seed heads were hanging on...some had exploded revealing their bounty of white fluffy seeds. I enjoyed weaving the grasses creating a gold and violet tangle.  Hmmmm I wonder what other treasures I will find as my clean up continues?

Terry Ludwig Shades of Nature Set

Note: Wallis sanded paper was the favorite of many pastelists. It came in white and Belgian mist and was a medium grade of grittiness. After some production issues it was hard to come by. I am not sure of the status of the paper now but I have come to enjoy using Uart sanded paper which I occasionally tone to the 'Belgian Mist' color.

First Painting of 2017 with Commentary

'Abundance'           11x14          pastel         ©Karen Margulis  
sold

 New Year's day dawned cold and rainy in Georgia. The perfect day to stay inside and paint. I was excited to start on my project #painttime2017. I had already prepared my paper and selected my palette. I was also ready to paint live on Facebook. Maybe you caught it? It didn't really go as planned and an important technical lesson was learned. I forgot to put my phone on wifi so the connection was poor during the demo. This led to some out of focus sections. I decided it was too distracting to watch and sadly deleted the demo. Lesson learned!

So instead I'll share my thoughts on the demo painting here on the blog. In case you missed yesterday's post I am challenging myself (and you!) to choose a subject and plan to paint it once a week. You can use any medium, any size....anything goes. The only thing that stays constant is the subject. I choose Queen Anne's Lace. Share your paintings on social media using #Painttime2017

• The painting is 11 x 14 on reclaimed Uart sanded paper. I had a few green and brown marks on this paper from a demo. I used turpenoid to wash the pastel in and tone the surface. It resulted in a nice neutral color with a blob of dark on the bottom of the paper. Perfect for my subject!
• I made a simple test strip to narrow down my palette. I decided to use Terry Ludwig pastels (the Richard McKinley set)
• I started the painting by drawing the flowers. I used simple ovals to place the flowers in a pleasing and dynamic way.
• Next I blocked in the darks. I used four colors in a dark value to establish the dirt/shadows in the grass.
• I then painted the sky. I started with yellows and then I realized that I had originally decided on blues for the sky. I scumbled some blue over the yellow and I liked the result. The yellow peaking through added a nice warm touch to my summer scene.
• Next I worked on the flowers gradually building layers of color from dark to light. I used some yellows, greens and violets in the flowers.
• I liked how the violet worked with the yellows so I added a few marks of violet to represent some purple wildflowers.
• Next I refined the grasses and foliage by spraying the area with Blair workable fixative. This gave me some texture as I layered the greens and yellows of the grasses. I did this three more times until I was satisfied.
• The finishing touches on the flowers were next. Some needed more refinement than others.
• I thought I was done but a second look after a break told me that a few bumble bees were needed. There would be bees in this abundance of wildflowers!
• The last thing I did was add the stray piece of yellow grass with a bee. Now the bottom part of the painting was connected to the top.

reference photo and test strip

close-up of flower and bees