For my underpainting, I decided to experiment with black and white pastel. I diluted and moved the pastel around with a synthetic brush and some water, just enough to get fairly even tones on the paper. (I've used the same size Canson Mi-Teintes pastel paper as my last painting, but this time in Champagne colour.) At this stage I worked quickly, concentrating mainly on matching the values to my thumbnail sketch from yesterday:

After I had the values laid in, I sprayed the piece with fixative, then began roughly filling in the sky, distant hills and water with colour:

I've begun another pastel drawing, with the aim of selecting subject matter that allows me to paint larger shapes. I've chosen an image that I've painted before – a fishing boat that we photographed on our trip to Scotland in 2011. I like the image so much, and thought it would lend itself well to a pastel painting.
Here is the initial value study that I created:

Happy Thanksgiving, Canadians, and a happy Monday to everyone else!
Here is the invitation I made for the Thanksgiving dinner we hosted yesterday. Happily, we had no cat-related disasters!

The next step in my painting was to spend some time laying in colour, focusing mainly on temperature and some highlights and shadow:

After finishing this stage of the painting I was worried that I'd lost the values that I'd planned on initially, so I took the above image and turned it grey-scale to test it out:

I found that the values were pretty much on track, except for the foreground which was a bit too light. To fix that, I gave the foreground more intense, slightly darker colours.
As I worked I felt that the houses on the left side of the piece were too low and too prominent, drawing attention away from my focus, which was the larger structures on the right. I raised the houses on the left and cooled down some of the colours in the mid-ground to push everything back. More texture and detail was added using pastel pencils:

I thought I might be close to finished at this point, but when I looked at the piece with fresh eyes, it seemed a little flat and lacking energy. In an attempt to push some parts of the image back, I'd over-blended much of the painting, losing some vital texture and mark-making in the process. After that I tried to be less precise and allowed the pastel to be apparent in the marks that I made to finish the piece.
Note to self: sometimes working faster prevents you from over-thinking and overworking!

I started at the top of the painting, taking some time to create some very soft variations in colour in the sky, then began to work my way down, laying in the distant hills and some of the warm colours in the mid-far distance:

At this point I was a little concerned that I might lose the sketch that described where the line of trees were in the mid-ground, so I quickly laid in some darks to rough out those shapes. After taking some time away from the piece I noticed that the hills in the distance were a bit too dark compared to my reference photo, so I lightened them up a bit and softened the shape somewhat:

The next step was to do a very fast sketch on my Canson pastel paper (the paper colour I chose was 490 - Light Blue). The sketch was really just to establish basic landmarks, not to draw in fine detail. I blocked in the darks and lights with black and white conté and utilized the paper colour as my medium-light value:

I could have gone on to do an underpainting in black and white, but I chose instead to use purple, one of the undertones in my image. At this stage I was just lightly working the pastel into the paper and establishing the same values that I had in my original thumbnails. This step is also a great way to cover a blank page – always a relief!

This week I'd like to share the process I used to make a pastel painting from start to finish (mistakes and all!). I've selected a photo we took of the Tuscan countryside as my reference, and I'm using Canson Mi-Teintes 22.9cm x 30.5cm pastel paper as my ground. I'm using a fairly wide variety of soft pastels, including my precious Unison colours as well as other cheaper colour sets that I've collected over the years.

My first task was to plan out the painting. To start, I made a couple of quick thumbnail drawings (about 7cm x 5cm each) to establish composition and tone – a valuable step so that I don't lose value range in the colour I see in my photograph:

The second thing I wanted to do before I began my painting was to make another fast thumbnail to plan out colour, keeping in mind the value studies from before and making notes about colour temperature:

One of the day trips we took in Italy was to the town of Sorano in Tuscany. Sorano is an artisanal town built into tuff rock. Narrow, zig-zagging alleys radiate down the hill, leading you past beautiful stone houses set in the shadow of the Orsini Fortress which towers above the town. We (well, some of us – not me) went up to Masso Leopoldino, a fortified, panoramic terrace where you can stand obnoxiously high and enjoy stunning views of the town. Or, you can get your much braver husband to go up and take lots of pictures that you can then paint from! This is one of those breathtaking (seriously, breathtaking!) views:

Just had to share a photo of the gorgeous bouquet of flowers my fantastic hubby bought me. This made my whole month!

My warm-up sketch today turned into an almost-all-morning sketch. I drew this after reading about Google's new underwater street view: