A step by step demonstration applying line to a landscape painting.
By Ursula Reese, SCA PAC
Dry Pastel lends itself beautifully to apply line to your work. Line can
be used to move the viewer around your picture. No centre of interest
is needed.
Material: A sanded pastel surface, museum quality. A good selection of
hard and extra soft pastels.along with an inexpensive hard bristle
brush and a kneaded eraser for corrections.
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Step 1. Outline of Shapes
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Determine the centre of your painting. Outline all your shapes in relation
to the centre. Some shapes are negative while others are positive. Pay
attention to line only, not to detail. Always measure where these shapes
and lines are located in relation to the centre.
I use a harder pastel stick of a neutral, fairly light colour to draw,
preferably one which I will use later in the painting. The lines will
disappear during the painting process.
Start applying the darkest value of each colour, that you are going to use
in your painting. I used blocks of colour in the background and lines in
the foreground and sky.
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Step 2. Filling the Shapes
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Fill the entire surface with lines leaving just small white spaces. This
allows you to apply more of the dark colour later if you need to. I use
extra soft pastel sticks for this process, but harder brands can also be
used.
The use of radiating lines in the sky will draw the eye into the
picture. I used a true blue at the top of the sky and moved down towards
the treeline with a cooler lighter blue and a very light warm yellow,
where the sky meets the trees.
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Step 3. Layering and Colour Relation
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Now I am ready to use midtones first and then lighter colours and layer them
over the dark values. I also added some darker line where I left white paper.
Now I check, if I have used all colours in at least three of the quarters
of my painting. Grasses in the foreground are accented by repeating a hint
of the sumac red, the blue from the sky and the green used in the
background trees. These green trees are being pushed back by using
a dark ultramarine blue.
I filled in all the white paper spaces with line and applied the lightest
colour values to give highlights to the trees in the background, as well
as the sumac and grasses in the foreground.
Final check for "Wild Grasses at Mountsberg": Did I relate
all colours? Are the lines moving the viewer around?
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