revisiting LaCarte

In July of 2013 I painted a pastel on LaCarte paper - a coarser surface than my favorite Wallis. At that time, I wanted a soft look for the painting shown above so it was a bit of a struggle. Today I pulled the painting out and began lifting color off with a hog bristle brush.

Here you can see the color of the paper showing through. As I lifted, removed and added more color, my mind was occupied with good thoughts of my former father-in-law who passed away today. I was painting on auto-pilot. At some point, I realized I was loving this paper!

"Godspeed" is sitting on my easel...I'm thinking about it. And, I wonder if I have anymore LaCarte. For those of you who are not familiar with this paper, you CANNOT get it wet and since I usually work with an underpainting, I have avoided it. Hope I have another sheet in my flat file.

spellbound

This painting is on blue Canson Mi-Teintes paper.  I prefer the "soft" side because I don't want the pattern of the paper to be a part of my painting. Canson Mi-Teintes holds much LESS pastel than my favorite sanded surface, Wallis. There is not much room for playing around with colors and shapes because the tooth of the paper is full before you know it and won't hold any additional color. When I taught workshops, this is the paper I started my students on and using it again was a good exercise for me because I was forced to work slowly and more thoughtfully.

jump-start

I think the 35 thumbnails did the trick to jump-start my work for the new year. This is the oil-wash foundation for my first painting of the Hometown Marshland series. It is based upon the very first thumbnail in a previous post. I like this very much because of the spontaneity and am SO tempted to leave it as it is and call it an oil painting. But, the point of my bright idea was to take a reference photo, paint a watercolor thumbnail using the photo as a guide, and move on through the process to complete a pastel painting. My goal for the finished painting will be to keep the looseness but to add enough detail to draw the viewer into the story behind the scene.

My hometown is Auburn, Washington. I spent my first 21 years there with my family, in a little house built by my father near the railroad tracks. When I was shooting the photos for this series, I could hear train whistles in the distance...music to my ears and soul.

a saturday spray

A warm Saturday morning and a good day to wash off another old pastel painting so I can begin again on the same Wallis paper. This one is 19 x 25 inches. In this photo, I'm blasting it with water from the garden hose and because it is a sunny day, I'll leave it here to drip dry.