Pastel on Twinrocker handmade paper (light gray tone, 6″ x 9″) November 2009 .

Pastel on Larroque handmade paper (cream tone, 8″ x 8″) November 2009 .

I’ve been working on more studies of Iona Island in an effort to move towards more expressive and abstracted images.  These are a step in that direction but not quite there yet – more to follow.

Pastel on Larroque handmade paper (cream tone, 8″ x 8″) November 2009 .

Iona Island is one of my favorite spots along the Hudson River.  It’s home to a bird sanctuary and beautiful marshy inlets like this one.  When we visited last week it was drizzling and foggy and I barely got my easel set up when the rain forced me back to the car.  I did a couple of quick sketches and took photos, and these references were what I worked from this weekend in developing this study.  I hope to get back there soon to work on site but for now my references will have to do, and I have a couple of other small studies started.  The color here really gave me a workout with my earth and gray pastels.  More to follow…

Pastel on Larroque handmade paper (gray tone, 8″ x 8″) November 2009 .

For this study, I went back to drawings I had done on site of a field out on Long Island during this past summer.  The late afternoon had just turned misty when we found this field and I set up beside the road and did some fast sketches.  These recent 8″ x 8″ studies are fun compositional and technical exercises, especially with this highly textured paper.

Pastel on Larroque handmade paper (gray tone, 8″ x 8″) November 2009 .

This is the same pastel as in my previous post, and I’ve reworked the lower third of the drawing here based on feedback from a friend.  She suggested lightening the most distant part of the field so that it feels more like it recedes toward the background.  In the previous version, the field felt somewhat flat and the transition from foreground to background was perhaps too severe (you can scroll down to my last post to see how it looked before I made these changes).  Ultimately, I think it might work better if I made the feel of the distant grass a little more similar in texture to the trees so that the transition is visually more gradual.  This change, though, will need to wait until I do a new study or a larger piece since I’ve worked this one to the point where little more can be done here without making a mess of things.  In any case, I welcome your thoughts and suggestions – are the changes I made an improvement?

Pastel on Larroque handmade paper (gray tone, 8″ x 8″) November 2009 .

I’m continuing to work through a series of pastels based on the spot in Sagano, Japan, that I wrote about in a post last week.  Progressively, I’m trying for more feeling and greater abstraction with this simple composition.  Here, I really enjoyed working with the texture of this beautiful handmade paper from Moulin de Larroque of France.  I bought four different papers by Larroque last week, each with a coarse texture that gives the paper a great deal of character.  It’s got a soft feel to it that grabs pastel well and this coupled with the texture makes it easy to layer soft pastel – a new one for my list of favorite papers.

Yesterday we visited a favorite spot along the Hudson River and I tried to get some drawing done but the weather didn’t cooperate.  Hopefully, my rough initial sketches and some photos I took as the rain came down will help me do some work in the studio until we can go back there again.

Black Conté on Cartiera Magnani Annigoni paper (8″ x 10″), October 2009.

Pastel on Twinrocker handmade paper (light cream tone, 8″ x 10″) October 2009 .

I’ve been busy with a lot of experimentation these days, and much of it hasn’t made its way to my blog yet (and maybe never will since some of it is especially rough).  The drawing above in soft pastel was subjected to a lot of overworking, blending, and relayering of color as I tried to work through what it is that I’m most interested in expressing here.  I’m revisiting a composition I used for a number of drawings a couple of years ago and will probably continue working through it until I arrive at some fresh interpretations that I’m excited about.  While most of my drawings these days are not really specific to any location, these are based on photos I took a few years ago at Sagano in Japan, a favorite spot outside of Kyoto.  The cottages set back into the woods have historical significance because the famous haiku poet Matsuo Basho stayed here for a couple of weeks in the seventeenth century.  I like to imagine that the setting looked largely the same back then and can picture Basho sitting in the cottage on a quiet, balmy summer day looking out on the fields while writing haiku.  A rich context for my drawings – now it’s back to work on trying to capture this feeling with pastel on paper.

Pastel on Ruscombe Mill handmade paper (blue tone, 5″ x 7″), October 2009 .

More Whistler influence, and one of my first recent tries at a nighttime scene.  This was done mostly from imagination, although I’m hoping to do more in the coming weeks with at least some of them based on sketching either outdoors or from a window in a dimly lit room. 

Pastel on Ruscombe Mill handmade paper (blue-gray tone, 7″ x 10″), October 2009 .

I’ve been studying Whistler’s Venice pastels lately and these drawings are a direct effort to incorporate some of what  I’ve learned.  This includes allowing the mid-value tone of the paper to substitute for applied color, use of very light “veils” of pastel, and particular focus on the area of interest.  I got a little heavy in places with my pastel here.  Whistler had a strong ability to get color and value correct right away with his “color notes” – for me this often requires more layering and experimentation until I arrive at what I was hoping for.  The success of his drawings also has much to do with the strength and accuracy of his sketching, which he typically did in charcoal, often over light pencil lines.  I brought charcoal out with me for these sketches but used pastel pencils for the initial drawings instead.  It was a beautiful, crisp fall morning and a real pleasure to be working outdoors.

Pastel on Twinrocker handmade paper (light gray tone, 5″ x 7″) September 2009 .

In my previous post I described my new plein air kit.  While I did both of these drawings indoors this afternoon I used my “indoor” set of soft pastels (by Unison) for the study on the left and my new “outdoor” set (by Terry Ludwig) for the study on the right.  In reality, I’m sure I’ll pick and choose from these sets when working indoors going forward but the main focus for me today was to really get to know the new set of Ludwig pastels so working on these two studies side by side seemed like a helpful exercise.  Having a strong familiarity with the colors in the new set and the way they relate to each other will be really important when I’m working outside with the pressures of frequently changing weather conditions, a bored spouse (sometimes!), etc.  I felt like I learned a tremendous amount from these studies with both my new palette and the older “indoor” one as well and I’m pretty happy with the results (wow, I don’t say that often!).  One new technique I’m experimenting with is using a painting knife to lightly blend or “bleed” the final layer of pastels into each other – used here mostly on the lavender.  I usually use the painting knife for pressing loose soft pastel particles more firmly onto the paper and for scraping at the pastel, so this expands my range of uses for it.  One other thing to note on these studies is that I’m using some handmade paper I ordered recently with one surface hot-pressed.  While the paper still has a pleasant texture it is a bit smoother and requires less effort to fill the nooks and crannies of the surface with pigment.  It’s nowhere near as smooth as a sheet of hot-pressed watercolor paper and seems to allow pastel to adhere well and to layer lightly.  I need to continue to strengthen my selection of color and value for my rubbed hard pastel “underpainting”, though, since in some places on these studies I had to apply more soft pastel than I would have liked in an effort to conceal awkward bits of underpainting. 

While I tend to feel I produce better work when operating in the comfort of home, the outdoors remains the primary source of information and inspiration for me.  With that in mind, I had been giving a great deal of thought to improving on my plein air setup.  These photos show my new French easel with umbrella and the set of soft pastels that I intend to make my painting kit when working outside.  I took these pictures yesterday out in the park near our apartment and, while the work I produced was dismal and won’t be posted here, the new setup worked out really well.  My old aluminum easel didn’t have a shelf or tray so I was always bending up and down to switch pastels or to get fixative, a painting knife, etc.  Also, while I love my large set of Unison soft pastels (all 400+ of them), they are awkward to bring outside in the foam-lined cardboard boxes I store them in.  As a result, I was usually working in hard pastel (colored Conté crayon) and pastel pencil when outdoors and these drawings lacked the strong, rich pigments of my soft pastels.  My new setup solves all of these problems, although it’s a lot more to schlep around with me.  The new box of pastels is the 60-piece plein air set by Terry Ludwig (Deborah Paris, an artist who works in a tonalist style, chose the palette for Ludwig).  I have to confess that it’s extremely satisfying to my fussy tendencies that the pastel box fits so neatly in the Julian easel’s drawer.  While I’ve grown somewhat used to having my hard pastels stored in a less orderly jumble in a small plastic case, I like my soft pastels neatly arranged in foam-lined boxes so they stay relatively clean and unbroken.  While working at the easel, I can keep my hard pastels and pencils, fixative, and other supplies in the easel’s box behind the working surface so there is much less bending up and down for me and everything is easily within reach.  With scattered clouds and bright sun yesterday, having the umbrella to keep me and my work in constant shade was a real treat.

As I mentioned, though, my drawing itself didn’t go so well.  Getting used to a new palette is a challenge and it will take some time and practice to become familiar with all of the colors and how they relate to each other.  The Ludwig pastels are softer than the Unison pastels I’ve been using (although the Unison’s are softer than many brands), and I’m still learning how best to handle them.  In any case my basic technique remains the same – sketching with soft pastel and blocking in with rubbed hard pastel before switching off to mostly using soft pastels.  I’ve got a small set of pastels by Diane Townsend coming soon and look forward to experimenting with these as well.  I’m really pleased with the Ludwig pastels – they’re both a pleasure to look at and to use.