Tree Study Finale, Pastel Painting, Shade Tree

This pastel study of the big shade tree is bringing my tree studies to completion. It will not be the end of painting trees, of course..

Shade Tree is soft pastel on Amersand Pastelbord, 8 x 10 inches from a photo taken in New Mexico last summer.

I worked on studying trees for the month of August. Maggie Stiefvater instigated the idea. At the time, I was working on cottonwoods and was not happy with the result, I decided to just follow through and investigate trees for the month.

The experience taught me a few things and reminded me of some I already knew.

• Each type of trees have their own structure, just like people or other subjects. A good skeleton will give you a good tree.
• Paint or sketch what you see, don't make Christmas trees or cotton balls. Suggest leaves in masses, don't do each leaf.
• Vary the greens, noticing if the green runs to the yellow or blue side. I like to have the compliment, red, in my trees.
• Take note of the time of day and weather.
• You can shape the tree with your sky or background color with "sky holes". The color in the holes is slightly darker than the sky or land.
• Like other landscape composition, you have to overlap and vary the height. I think this is important, even if in real life the trees make a fairly straight line.

Coincidentally on Friday, I received the Pastel Journal for October containing an article, "5 Takes on Trees". The first, Karen Watson has a very realistic style with strong color. Very appealing to my eye. She says she doesn't get caught up in details and changes the scene to better her composition.

Then Jack Pardue who agrees on accuracy in drawing but uses color to keep it interesting and full of life. Nice trees, I guess that is why they chose him, right?

Sarah Bee, focuses on light and minimizes detail. Exciting color with little true green.

Britani Faulkes says, My pastel paintings are often described as anthropomorphic." She paints the shapes more than details.

Brett Varney simplifies trees and uses unusual color and imagination in his oil pastel paintings.

In the end, each artist interprets trees in their own style and palette. I paint in a realistic way, so I need to keep closer to the actual colors and shapes. Practice and experience will help my paintings to convey my ideas and inspiration to the support and on to the viewer.

My tree study posts.

El Álamo, tree study, pastel painting

I finally did a tree study to go along with Maggie's challenge and study.

El Álamo
8 x 10 inches, on the new R-tis-tx artist board, sanded surface with soft pastels.

I like this cottonwood much more than the previous ones. I put in the sky with several different colors of blue. Then the background bushes and ground. When I started the big tree, I focused on putting in the trunk and branches first. Then the dark foliage, working toward the light with several different greens and yellow. The trunks are very dark in the shade so used a dark reddish purple and dark blue. The lighter side is a mauve color as the tree bark looks pretty gray in the sun.

The cottonwood has very gnarly bark and many sky holes in them. They are pretty bright green so I had to consider where to put the darks. Because I was not doing this plein air like the other, I had time to study my reference photo. I still paint quickly, it is just the way I paint. I used acrylics to do the other, but I don't think that using pastels was easier, I just took my time.


Here is a black and white version to see the values.

This would take many hours with colored pencil. I am not patient for that. Maybe one of these days.

This is encouraging and I will do another tomorrow with a group of the trees again.

Let me know what you think, good or bad. I can take it. :) Thanks.

By the way, I read on some blog or wetcanvas that some artist takes photos of their paintings in full sunlight. (I can't remember who to give the artist credit .. maybe I will remember later) I usually take mine on sunny days but in the shade. I took the photo of this one in the sun. So much better than the one in the shade. I didn't have to adjust the color. I't going to retake the elephant tomorrow in the sun and see if I also get good results.

Tree sketches, pastel and ink pen

I haven't forgotten the tree studies for the month. I did a study in pastels of more cottonwood on Wednesday and Thursday. I wiped off the one I had done before. I like the trees much better the second time round. The house is a house in Magdalena that I just put under the trees and I think it is a bit large, making the trees look small. It is just a study though and I will probably take it off the Pastelbord and use it the surface again.


Here it is, pastel on Pastelbord, 8 x 10 inches.

While in Albuquerque, Gene did his birthday bike ride and while waiting for him I sketched this cottonwood up close. Good for the tree study. There was one of the old adobe houses there with blue trim, but the people were outside so I didn't take a photo. I couldn't see the house from my sketching angle. I would so love to have one of those old adobes with the 2 1/2 foot thick walls and old cottonwoods around. We need to win the lottery for that. :(


I sketched this little indoor Ficus at the hospital. I was more interested in the tree part so the pot is not great. I see that I didn't even date it.


From Mom Frances' room the view out the window toward the freeway. There were interesting plants growing on the slope, chamisa, grease wood and some grasses.

Tree Sketch

For the second sketch of Hunt 618

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1475894

I chose tree. Trees are not the easiest thing to draw.  Each one has a personality.  I spent quite a while studying them back in 2006.  You can review my process here on my blog. 

https://jocastilloartblog.blogspot.com/search?q=tree+study

Over the years it has become easier to draw and paint trees.  Like anything you paint it is all about light, value and negative spaces.  Negative space is the space around the drawing.  The open spaces between the trunks and limbs and leaves.  Tree holes.

In colored paintings where the sky shows through the leaves you paint it just a tad darker than the sky as you are looking through a tunnel of sorts.

Number 2 tree - a Yaupon and cedar that we see through the guest room window.  We don't look out that way much as the room isn't used often.  Drawn with the Pilot Ink Pen that I thought didn't work any more.  It does if you hold it at just the right spot.  I almost threw it away.  Whew.

Yaupon is a type of holly and grows all over the place.  It is very flammable and part of the problem in the big fire of 2011.  It is growing up at the bottom of these trees and should be trimmed again.  Yaupon is pretty and delicate looking.  The female plants have red berries.   This tree is a male I guess, no berries.  We took out the rest when we cleaned the yard.  The cedar trees are not native to the area and soak up all the water.    That is about all the trees left in our yard.  There was an oak and another big Yaupon by the driveway.  The guys that cleaned the brush out took them too.  I wasn't very happy to loose the oak especially.

If you click on 'trees' at the bottom of my blog in Labels.  You will see many paintings and sketches of trees when I remembered to label them.  They might give you some ideas.

Pastel Painting Work in Progress

I took part in Enid's https://www.enidwood.com/  pastel class (Zoom) yesterday.  September assignments dealt with Notan sketches and values.    

 Notan is a Japanese term which literally means "light dark harmony". Artists use "notan studies" to explore different arrangements of light and dark elements in a painting, without having the distraction of other elements like color, texture and finer details.  I took this from:

https://drawpaintacademy.com/notan/

I missed a couple of classes so I did a page of 2 value sketches to see what I thought of my photo to paint from.

The class had progressed to using a value study for the start of this painting.  I usually do an under painting if starting on a white canvas and then put down my light and dark colors for my sketch.  That is my value study in a nutshell.

This is an 11 x 14 inch white Pastelbord.  I put on a watercolor under painting.  I did it shortly before class.  I would have liked to make it darker in value but didn't have time for the water to dry.

I put in my basic colors placing the dark and light values.  Usually in a landscape the sky is the lightest value and is in this painting.  

We worked about 30 minutes.  I hoped to have my dark areas linked together, this unifies the painting.  This is a minimum start.

Where will I go from here?  

• Place more dark values.
• Work all over the painting.  Concentrating on one area tends to create more detail than necessary and I get bogged down and overwork an area.  I was already working too much on the window which I will most likely move toward the tree and have that as the center of attention.
• Keep in mind to have some orange in the greens to keep them natural looking.
• Put some of each color family in all parts of the painting.
• Try to have some variety of color/value or items to lead the eye around the painting. 
  
• I think I would like to have distant mountains instead of the hills in the painting.  See how that goes. Maybe that would remove the other buildings behind the tree.  Hmmm.
  
• Have a light touch with my pastels 

I can still make changes without starting over.  I'm liking the colors so far.  As you know I would rather paint from life and since I am not doing that I can have free rein of my background or changes, right?  Well, you can do that even if you are painting on site.  Artists' license.

*** ** **************** ** ***

We went to live music on Sunday afternoon/evening.  Bastrop had a music festival.  We went to see Libby Koch.  She is a neighbor down the road that we met through Joanna who as you know follows live music almost daily.  Libby played and was accompanied by fellow Bastropian Ben Zuniga.  Pat Byrne closed out the festival.  We stayed for a couple of songs by Pat Byrne but it was the late evening and the volume was ramped up past my limit.  We were at the Old Town Restaurant and Bar.  Food was good.  It was so nice to get out and about and visit and see some folks.  Libby's spouse is Chuck Hawthorne, also singer songwriter.

https://www.libbykoch.com/

https://chuckhawthorne.com/

 

Libby and Ben

Go out and eat, see some music, go to a play or museum.  Support your local businesses.  Amazon doesn't need our help.

Gene and I refuse be afraid to live. 

On the Hunt .. Sketch

I got another sketch done for Scavenger Hunt 112. A little Hunting info for a few new readers of my blog: I sketch to help "see" lines and shapes better. It seems to help when I paint to put down fewer strokes and have them in the right places. I sketch freehand with no pencil, just the ink pens. Hopefully I "look" better and draw better. It works at times and sometimes I just barrel in and run out of paper or steam. These Hunts on wetcanvas.com give me ideas to sketch; items I would never normally sketch so I have to study them well, like a bathroom sink or a fire hydrant, meter box, etc.

Tonight I did the challenge of putting in 3 or more items from the list into a still life grouping. Number 3, something plastic - the cinnamon container. Number 4, something wooden - my rolling pin for flour tortillas. It is smaller than a regular rolling pin. Number 5, a utensil for cooking/baking - measuring spoons. Number 6, holiday keepsake - a little round metal cookie cutter. I got it in Bolivia at Alacitas (more about that in the next post) and use it for biscochitos, typical Mexican cookies for Christmas. They have anise for flavoring and cinnamon sugar on top. I try to make them small and thin to melt in your mouth like Gene's Aunt Lea. She made the best in the world. She shaped them like little leaves.


Christmas brings on the memories. Tomorrow's post will be about the tree and Alacitas. Oh my, a Bolivian tune just came on my iTunes, "Saint John" by Inka Wayra from their album, "Christmas in the Andes". Interesting. I have the iTunes just on the library in general as I had heard my fill of Christmas carols and songs today while wrapping packages and getting out the nativity scenes. And those are other stories....... Now the tunes is on to Kenny G. Sometimes the random play is very interesting. Next was Jason Roberts with a fiddle tune, "Don't Let the Deal Go Down".

City of Rocks, 8/24/06

Yesterday we went to the City of Rocks State Park. The huge boulders are lava that they think came from a volcano near Albuquerque. They are just plopped down out on the side of a mesa and flat area. I wasn't impressed from the road, but when you get there it is amazing. There is quite a bit of space in between the boulders. You can hike around like a maze. They make shade and there are oak trees (I think) and many flowers, thanks to all the rain. It was great. We spent about 5 hours there. I did the two plein air sketch/paintings. The rocks with the tree was first on Art Spectrum sanded paper, 9 x 12, portrait layout. the paper was a soft blue. I used mostly my new set of Rembrandt pastels with some NuPastels and Daler-Rowney to fill in and blend. I like the feel of that scene. The landscape formatted painting is on white Art Spectrum paper. I brushed on some pastels in contrasting colors and wet them with water to cover the white of the paper. Then painted with the same pastels as the previous day. The mountains in the back appear closer than they were, I assume I made them too dark so that pulled them closer. It was a good practice study but I like the first one the best. Sue is fascinated with the rocks in New Mexico and likes the challenge of sketching and painting them. We painted in the Española area last year. I did remember to take one photo of the first before I put on the lights in the foreground. I may just add some highlights with some soft pastels and frame that one!

The hummingbird stopped by to visit. I got a photo of a squirrel and bird as well.

Gene rode his bike to the park and came back with us. He rode about 25 miles. I may not post again tomorrow as we will be on the road. He will attempt his birthday ride. His idea is to ride his age (65) and put some miles in the bank for the age when he can't ride that far! So he will try for his goal of 100 miles. He did make it last year and it is much flatter here, so I imagine he will do it. Stay tuned.