Painting the Warby Hut; Stage Three, Refining the Artwork, in Pastels ` Art Lesson.

Painting the Warby Hut; Stage Three, Refining the Artwork, in Pastels ` Art Lesson. 05/08/2010

With beautiful soft artist quality pastels and loving the texture of the paper, I lightly worked over the acrylic under painting, lightening the sky so it contrasted with the mountain. Show in the side image, I am creating haze over the mountain.
I also took this softening with the pale ultramarine blue into the tree line behind the hut, creating an airial perspective appearance of greater distance and at the same time reducing the overall appearance of green as I wanted to create the effect of softer lighting of early morning or late afternoon, much as I had viewed this scene myself.

Working in a confined caravan setting I made a compromise on the composition of the finished art work due to the available time I have to paint. I am not fully comfortable with compromising any part of my art standards and that is the reason I do not paint very much anymore. I am very much an all or nothing person. I do want painting to become a part of my new life as a carer though know it can never be what it was when I was the Internationally acclaimed artist with my own multi award winning gallery.

I have 9 trays of pastels with three trays placed in each of three boxes. One box is for my cool colours of blue and blue green or blue violet. I have a yellow to yellow orange, yellow green and white box. Then a red to red violet and orange box. Then within these boxes, I have divided my trays into the dark, the medium tones and the light tones. I find this system easy and efficient to work with and pack for travel.

Working into the shadows over the entire painting, placing dark ultramarine blue everywhere it is medium dark regardless of the actual colour of the object, as I want a beautiful colour harmony for this painting, that at least I have the time to do. I accentuate the split opposite colour harmony of blue blue violet, yellow orange and red orange. I subduing, though do not totally overwhelming the green in the original photo and under painting.

Close up detail of part of the painting.

This is the time in my life for me to share the skills I learned with those who now have the time to pursue painting as a career or lifetime skilled hobby.

I use a dark orange gold pastel for small areas on the mountain, the trees, and the ground, especially in the foreground and the corners as I wanted to darken these to keep the eye within the work. I have used this as accents on the building and the rough texture of the paper helped me achieve the effect of the colour only on a few high points, not a solid cover.

My next bog with show the work at stage four, detailing completed.