Painting Sunlight & Shadow with Pastels

Posted by Maggie

I received something really wonderful in my email: the final image of the cover of my new book, Painting Sunlight & Shadow with Pastels. Published by North Light Books, it's due to release in April 2011. Seeing the cover made me even more eager to see the design and appearance of the inside of the book, but I'm trying to be patient. (That noise you hear is me patiently tapping my foot and drumming my fingers on the desktop.)

As you might guess from the title, this book explores the subject of sunlight and shadow in depth: how to understand the way these elements work together to describe form, and how to paint the effects they create. Of course, there are lots of reproductions of my own work, and I wrote most of the text. But in order to give you examples of different approaches and styles, I enlisted the aid of five wonderful artists. They are (in alphabetical order since they are all on the top of my list of artists): Phil Bates, Liz Haywood-Sullivan, Kim Lordier, Richard Lundgren, and Colette Odya Smith. Their stunning artwork and concise explanations of their methods added depth and richness to the book, and I'm grateful to all of them for their contributions.

The book can be pre-ordered (at a very nice savings) from North Light Books, and later when I have them in stock, you'll be able to order signed copies directly from me through my web site. And of course, they'll be available for sale at the IAPS Convention in June 2011, and I'll be doing book-signings there as well.

Writing a book is a long process, and the journey to publication of this book began over two years ago with my first proposals and outlines. I'm very excited that my part of the task is completed, and can't wait to see the printed results!

Finishing a painting

Posted by Maggie

When I get close to "done" with a painting, I like to let it rest for a few days or a week. It gives me time to move away from the outdoor subject or the photographic reference, and when I come back to look at the painting again, I can judge it based on its own merits without comparing it to nature or a photograph. Usually, whatever's wrong with the painting or whatever could be improved becomes obvious after a little cooling off period.

I do a lot of demonstration paintings in my workshops, and I frequently don't have time for this last analysis and completion of a painting until I get back home days or even weeks later. In mid-November, I presented a demonstration for the Pastel Society of New Mexico, in the facility where their annual National Exhibition was held. About 40-50 people attended this demonstration, and since it only lasted a little over an hour and people had lots of questions, I didn't finish it. The photograph at the left shows what the painting looked like when I stopped.

The following day, I flew to Cincinnati to film two instructional DVDs (they'll be released in February). After returning home, it was time to prepare for Thanksgiving and a family reunion. So it wasn't until a couple of days ago that I was able to begin studying the painting with an eye towards finishing.

The first thing that really bothered me was the shape of the hill. I'd moved the position of the hill over from the photo reference, so that I could see more water. But the shape no longer worked; too rounded, too unnatural. Then, while I was happy with the foreground colors in the weeds, there were too many horizontal strokes, rather than vertical strokes which would imply upright grasses and weeds.

Finally, colors and shapes in several of the trees, including the dead scrubby trees at the far left, needed to be adjusted. At the time I finished the painting, I wasn't sure I'd like the effect of the roughed-in distant mountains, but as time went by, I decided they were just fine as they were. I didn't want them to draw too much attention, but wanted to imply that the trees on those far-away hills also displayed some fall color.

Above, Fall Palette, 16x20 pastel on Richeson Black Sanded surface, ©Maggie Price.

Now it's time to give it a few more days in the "holding zone" to make sure there are no serious problems. There's nothing worse than noticing a fatal flaw after you've framed the painting!

The Value of Organization

Posted by Maggie

Yesterday I cleaned and reorganized my travel set of pastels. I do this every now and then, but they really need it after a series of workshops in a short time.

I’m picky about the system which I use to organize them, and like to have each stick in its proper section. But in the rush of doing demonstrations, sometimes I put them back in wrong places, and later that will bother me, so I need to rearrange. This time I was surprised at how many sticks had been worn down to little nubs and needed to be replaced.

For travel, I use the backpack size of the pastel box made by Heilman Designs. I like the way it protects my pastels from breakage, and the fact that skinny little sticks can go next to fat ones and both are embraced by the memory foam and held in place. At home, I have a large box divided into the same six-section format.

Some people arrange their pastels by type (hardness or softness), some by brand, and some by hue. I arrange mine by value and temperature. The divisions are as follows, left to right: darkest dark, middle dark, lightest dark, darkest light, middle light, lightest light. Each value section is arranged with warm colors at one end and cool at the other.

Whatever system you use, I think it’s important to be consistent. When you’re painting, you don’t want to spend a lot of time searching for the right stick of pastel. Rather, you want to know where it is, just as you know where the keys are on your computer keyboard, or as a pianist knows where the keys are on the piano.

The reason I like this system is that, when selecting a pastel, I want to think value first, temperature second, and hue last. Getting the proper value and temperature of a pastel is critically important. When those are right, almost any hue will do.

Most beginning artists have some understanding of value—the relative lightness or darkness of a color—but many have trouble with temperature, the perception of a color as warm or cool. Basically, you can analyze the temperature of a color by breaking it down into components. In the three primary colors, red and yellow are warm and blue is cool. So, you put blue at the cool end of the arrangement and yellow and red at the other. Orange is composed of yellow and red, so is warm.

The difficulty comes with colors that are made from both cool and warm components. Purple is made of red and blue, so you have to look at the color and decide whether it’s more red than blue or vice versa. I put the red-purples towards the warm end and the blue-purples to the cool end. Greens are quite ambiguous, so they go in the middle.

I’ll write more about color temperature and simultaneous contrast in another blog.

Organizing your pastels by this system will take a couple of hours. It’s important to remove all the wrappers and break the pastels into pieces an inch or an inch and a half long, so that you can use them on their sides as well as using the tips.

Once they are organized, you’ll begin noticing immediately when a stick is in the wrong place, especially if it’s off by more than a little. The daily exercise of putting the sticks back in the right place and learning to reach to the right section for appropriate value and temperature will improve your perception of both. As your perception of value, particularly, improves, you’ll see it more quickly in the arrangement of pastels, in nature and in photographs, and place it more accurately in your painting.

At the Alhambra Palace

Posted by Maggie

On Thursday we spent the day at the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. We had pre-arranged artists' passes, so we were able to wander where we wished and avoid the long lines and timed entries we would have had otherwise. In a previous year when our workshop group went to the Alhambra, we were able to paint, but apparently, they decided at that point to not allow easels to be set up again. (If you're interested, you can read about that painting day on the Pastel Journal blog.) So we packed our sketching materials and our cameras, and set off to see what we could see.

The Alhambra Palace perches on a hill overlooking Granada, which looks like an interesting city to visit in itself. Parts of the buildings date back to the 9th century, but it has been continually added to, expanded, revised and remodeled over the years. It was abandoned for a number of years and then further restorations began in the 19th century. At present the restoration of the Lion Court is under way, as it has been for some years. The lions and fountain were placed in their original position in the 14th century, but had deteriorated over time. The restoration has revealed many interesting things about the lion figures, and the ground beneath the fountain contained architectural remnants as well. The lions are now on display in a special room (where no photography was allowed). Once thought to be all alike, the restoration has revealed quite a few differences between them.

The intricate decorations of carvings and tile are fascinating, but do not obscure the underlying architectural structure. I love the arches and doorways, the reflecting pools and the palms and other foliage surrounding them. I like photographing some of these complex architectural elements, though I wouldn't try to paint them!

After we walked for some hours, we went to a wonderful little restaurant for lunch, then walked some more. It became quite a hot day/ we were all tired by the time the bus collected us and the ride back to the hotel was very quiet.

Time passes so quickly in these workshops. We are all trying to absorb as much as possible, and it goes by too fast. But the paintings, photographs and memories of Spain will stay with us for years to come.

Take me to the river

Posted by Maggie

Much of what we paint in Spain is architectural—whether it's the white walls and red rooftops of the pueblos blancos or bridges or other subjects. So it was a nice break to go out for a day in the campo, or countryside, and paint natural subjects.

The River Genal runs through the Genal Valley and Júzcar, and while it is not a large river, it has some very pretty spots. The place we went to paint also has ruins of an old tin factory, and while that's still an architectural subject, at least it's falling down stone walls and not white villages. In the area around the ruins are orange and lemon trees, and one tree with odd fruits that were finally identified as persimmon, though they didn't look like the persimmons we know at home.

In the morning I painted a demonstration on how to paint moving water and rocks, which was quite fun after all these days of painting buildings. The river was quite shadowed when I began, but as the day went on it got more and more light. It was cool in the morning but as soon as the sun hit, so did the flies. There's always some problem when you're painting outdoors—if it's not too hot or too windy, then there are probably bugs. Or, sometimes, you get them all. But if the painting comes out well, it's all worth it. Left, my demo, Rio Genal, 9x11, Pastelmat, ©Maggie Price.

What makes a plein air painting a success? Well, first of all, I try not to call them paintings, but rather field studies. Calling your work a field study removes the pressure of trying to create a finished, frameable painting, and lets you just get as much information about value, temperature, color and form as you can get before the light changes. And sometimes, if you're lucky, it's also a painting.

Late in the afternoon I took a few minutes for a really quick study. Working on a dark gray-black, I did this little study of the ruins in about 35 minutes. My goal was to get as much as possible about color and value onto the page in that short time, without worrying too much about composition or drawing. I wanted to keep it loose and free and imply more than state the form of the walls. I'm pretty happy with the resut, Ruins, 9x11, Pastelmat, ©Maggie Price.

It was a nice day and a nice change of pace. We went back to the hotel for an early night and preparation for a very early departure the next morning for our trip to Granada and the Alhambra Palace, the subject of the next blog in this series.

Flamenco!

Posted by Maggie

Each year so far in our Spain workshop we've scheduled a night to go to Ronda for a flamenco performance. Some people don't like the late night and don't go, but most are excited about the chance to see a traditional performance. The group who've performed for the last few years that we've been here are no longer performing, so this year we went to see a different group. Like the other one, there were three "band" members, a drummer, guitarist and vocalist, but this one only had two female dancers and no male dancer.

Flamenco music is not what I had thought it would be, before I ever attended a performance. Our hotel host David describes it as the Spanish version of American country & western. The songs sound quite sad, but the beat is insistent and energizing. The energy level was important since the performance did not star until ten p.m., quite late for Americans and particularly those of us who had been up early to paint. 

Generally, the dancers change costumes for each dance. The whole performance lasts about an hour and a half, with a short break in the middle. I like the costumes—the group we used to see had traditional costumes for each dance, but this one had a more modern approach. Nevertheless, the dancers were very good.

Our chef at the Hotel, Ivan, is multi-talented. In addition to having trained at Cordon Bleu in London and being creative in the kitchen, he is a painter, working in a number of mediums. On the bus ride into Ronda, he mentioned that he had been taking flamenco lessons at the school run by one of the dancers. He's studied flamenco previously but the recent lessons have challenged him to do more. To his, and our, surprise, near the end of the performance, one of the dancers went off the stage, into the audience, and grabbed him by the hand and took him up onto the stage to dance with her. It was great fun to see "our" Ivan dance, and he's quite good. He danced with each of the women, but unfortunately my camera disk filled just after he began. I'm going to have to beg for photos from some of the other people there.

All in all it was an exciting evening and made it hard to go to sleep, what with the music and the sound of flamenco feet racing through my head. I am looking forward to a chance when I get home to paint them from memory and photos.

Painting in Alpandeire

Posted by Maggie

Today we went to another one of the pueblos blancos in the Genal Valley. Alpandeire is one of my favorite villages. It's sometimes called the "forgotten village," as it has not been modernized as much as some of the other white villages. You often see people riding or leading their horses through the village, and life has not changed much in the last few years, or perhaps dozens of years. The village is a little bigger than Júzcar, having a population of around 200. Today it was bustling as they prepared for a celebration of Fray Leopoldo which will happen tomorrow. It was also a market day, so there were tents with clothing for sale, and a clinic day, which meant the doctor was visiting.

We painted in spite of the unusual traffic and activity. My demo this morning was on aerial perspective and how to make tree-covered hillsides recede or come forward. It is a challenge to see the subtle variations between the mountain ranges and to paint them. To make it more complex, the farthest mountain had bare rock which was somewhat pink in the morning light. Two of the valley's white villages were in my composition, though they were quite some distance away. I am happy with the way the painting demonstrated the concepts I reviewed for the group. Left, White Villages, 9x11, pastelmat, ©Maggie Price.

By the time I finished the morning demonstration, the chill had turned to warmth and we began shedding layers. Most of the painters went to take photographs and explore the village, and I moved my easel a little to paint a closer subject of a white building, tile roof and chimney. I was not able to bring this piece to a point I really considered a finished painting, but it's a good color and value  field study. The tile roofs could use some more attention, but at this point I was in full sun and the light had changed. Left, Chiminea, 7x10, Pastelmat, ©Maggie Price.

We enjoyed a packed lunch and painted until 4 p.m., then headed back to Júzcar. On the way back the bus paused for us to take photos of the village from a good vantage point in the later afternoon light. I love the view of the village from this perspective; you get a good idea of its placement in the mountains. We're having an early dinner tonight and then heading into Ronda for a flamenco performance, which should give us all a chance to get some great photographs. I'll post some tomorrow.