Road House in New Mexico, Pastel Plein Air Painting

It was a beautiful day and Gene was biking, preparing for his 100 mile birthday ride. I decided to go paint with my soft pastels along the road where he was riding. By the time I had been out about an hour the wind was whipping and I had to hold my easel down with my left hand. Which is OK, as I don't use my left for anything when I am painting. I don't know how Gene can bike in the wind and mountains, but he did thirty miles or so.

Here is the start, under painting. I put on some pastel and brush it around with water. The Pastelbord was a beige color .. you know not my favorite. The purpose of the under painting today was two fold. I like to cover the white or beige in this case so the white doesn't show through and I don't have to use as much pastel to cover the surface. The second reason today was that the board has been around a while and was scuffed up a little. It is hard to cover the marks and they will show in the sky. The under painting helps that, too.

I started by adding in the sky and the far mountains. By the time I finished there were quite a few clouds, but I thought they would distract from the house and aspens. I like to work all over the surface, but in a landscape it is easier to work from back to front or top to bottom for the most part. I also try to have the board tilted a little forward so the pastel dust falls away from the painting. That wasn't too easy today.

You can see a little more development of the painting here. Basically just continuing the process.

This is the painting at the end of the two or so hours. 11 x 14 inches on Pastelbord, plein air.

I was not happy with the size of the house, so I worked on it some more here at home and developed the foreground a little bit and added blue to the far mountains to move them back. I will post a photo tomorrow as there was no direct sun for the photo here at the condo.

After about two hours I was finishing up and Gene came by and I gave him a lift home. The last 1/2 mile or so it torture coming up to the condo on the bike as we are right at the foot of the ski lift. It was a good day, we were both tired. We went to dinner and are now ending the day. A glass of wine and enjoy the sunset from the balcony.