Philadelphia Sunrise, Act Two

Painting by Vicky Christensen, acrylic on 14 X 11 inch Pastelbord

I decided to give the Philadelphia sunrise another shot. I wanted to try it on a smoother surface and happened to have an Ampersand Pastelbord available. This time I used a Liquitex medium magenta rather than alizorin crimson for the magenta clouds and reflections. I kept this version pretty loose.

Experiment: Acrylic on Ampersand Pastelbord

Painting by Vicky Christensen, Acrylic on Ampersand Pastelbord, 12 X 16 inches

I wasn't planning on painting today. But I had some paint left over from yesterday and on the spur of the moment I decided to do something fast and loose. I also wanted to try acrylic on Ampersand Pastelbord. I have used Pastelbord a number of times for pastel paintings but I have never used it for acrylics until tonight.

The inspiration for the painting was a photo I found in the Wet Canvas reference image library: http://www.wetcanvas.com/RefLib/showphoto.php?photo=67973. I had planned on painting it with pastels but it was fun to do it with acrylic paints.

Yet Another Waterfall

Pastel on Ampersand Pastelbord, 12 X 16 in.

Today's painting is another waterfall. This one is based on a photo taken by my nephew. I'm not sure if this is in Hawaii or in Alaska -- he spent the winter house-sitting in Hawaii and this summer is captaining a fishing boat in Alaska.

I started with a watercolor underpainting:

Some artists are so good at underpaintings that they can leave a lot of the underpainting showing in the finished painting. I am not able to do that yet. But I keep trying, and starting with the underpaining gives me a road map for the finished painting

Water Lilies Are Hard to Paint

Pastel on Ampersand Pastelbord, 16 X 12 in.

I decided to try to paint water lilies. I have a lovely photo that has been in my "to paint" pile for a while, one I took on vacation. Every other time I thought about painting it I passed, mostly because I thought it would be a tough one to get right. And boy, was I right about that. I learned that it is better to get your water + reflections painted right first, because it is almost impossible to fix it after you start adding the lily pads. And I never quite figured out how to paint the lily pads.

But I haven't given up on water lilies yet. I have a photo of Monet's Giverny lily pond that is waiting for me.

Underpainting

After I finished the community ed pastel painting class I realized that I needed a lot more than just a few night classes. So I looked for books and online sources of instruction. Just about every resource I found put an emphasis on doing underpaintings. I watched some previews of Artists Network presentations by Liz Haywood Sullivan on You Tube and was fascinated by how she made underpaintings with pastel and alcohol. Later I found some great You Tube videos of Leesa Padget painting, set to great background music (highly recommended!). I thought "I need to try this!" So I did, and I have been hooked ever since.

Pastel and Alcohol Underpainting on Pastelbord

Pohoiki Bay, near Hilo Hawaii; pastel on Ampersand Pastelbord over pastel/alcohol underpainting

This is one of the first paintings I did with a pastel and alcohol underpainting. This is also the first painting I did on Ampersand Pastelbord, and I must say I love this surface. It is great for any wet media underpaintings, plus I love how it grabs the pastels. 

 Watercolor Underpainting on Pastelbord

watercolor underpainting on Ampersand Pastelbord

Finished painting

Pastel and alcohol underpaintings are great, but I really wanted to try watercolor. I found a photo taken at Monet's Giverney in the Wet Canvas reference image library that I really wanted to paint, so I took a stab at it. The result is above. I found that I really love using watercolor for underpainting. I am not a watercolor painter, so I just block in the major areas of the painting with watercolor, not worrying about fine details.So far I haven't strayed too far from the "local" colors when painting the underpaintings. If I'm lucky I can keep some of the watercolor uncovered by pastel in the finished product. Even if I do cover it with pastel, just working out the composition with the watercolor makes the painting process a lot easier.

Watercolor Underpainting on Wallis

watercolor underpainting on Wallis Museum sanded paper

finished painting

This is another watercolor painting, this time on Wallis Museum. This surface was a little more resistant to the watercolor but still handled it well.

Watercolor Underpainting on Art Spectrum Supertooth

watercolor underpainting on Art Spectrum Supertooth

finished painting

The watercolor flowed quite nicely on the Supertooth. I was able to control the water plus reflections and the shading on the rocks in the foreground quite nicely.