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

I Love Waterfalls

Pastel over watercolor underpainting on PastelMat, approx. 16 X 12 in.

Today's painting is another tropical waterfall. Who doesn't love them? My inspiration was a photo I took on my vacation in Hawaii.

As with Tuesday's painting, I painted a watercolor underpainting first, then finished with pastels. The surface is PastelMat, which grabs the pastels quite well, considering how velvety smooth it feels. I was able to put down quite a few layers of pastel, which is quite helpful when you are painting water. For Tuesday's painting I used Grafix Double Tack to adhere the PastelMat to acid free foam core, then did the underpainting. I noticed a slight amount of bowing due to the PastelMat swelling a bit from the water. So today I stapled the paper to an art board, painted the watercolor, then adhered it to the foam core after the watercolor dried. The staples left impressions in the paper, so I probably won't do that next time.

For what it's worth, here is the underpainting:

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. 

Failure

There is nothing like a failed painting to remind me how much I have to learn. For that matter, what I consider my successes would be considered failures by experienced artists. Here are some examples of recent failures:

pastel on Canson Mi Teintes, textured side

 I did this painting based on a photo of breaking surf in Hawaii. The photo was beautiful, the painting isn't. The first mistake was using the textured side of the paper. The second mistake was working as I was viewing the photo on my tablet. I was unable to see all the nuances of the rocks and did not capture their beauty. The final mistake was when I sprayed on some Spectrafix fixative in hopes of being able to add more pastel. I didn't do a good spray job and some of the pastel ran. Lessons learned. If I were to try this again, I would do it on another surface (or at least on the smooth side of the Canson). I may have to try it again because, take my word for it, the photo is beautiful.

pastel on Wallis over pastel/alcohol underpainting

This is another painting based on one of my Hawaii photos. I really love the photo this was based on, but once again I couldn't capture its best qualities in a painting. I wasn't able to capture the light and shadows, as well as the beautiful variations of color and reflections in the water.

I decided to make an attempt to fix it. I removed all of the pastel down to the underpainting and tried again. I went for a looser style, but can't say that it improved matters any. And I wrecked the composition when I made the stream wider.

re-work over same underpainting

pastel over watercolor underpainting on Wallis sanded paper

This painting is supposed to be a hibiscus, but it ended up looking like either a frilly flying saucer, or huge orange lips. I was painting this as a gift for my sister-in-law for doing me a favor and ended up with nothing to give her. In retrospect, I think the problem is that the flower appears to be floating in space against the background. I should have realized the composition was a problem when this was in the underpainting stage. Maybe I can salvage this by working on the background, at a minimum add a stem and leaves so the poor blossom isn't suspended in space.