Composition and value

"countryside" 10"x10" on Pastel Premier  $80

When I visit my sister in Connecticut, I usually like to take a walk up the road and take some photos of the beautiful countryside. She lives up on a hill and the view is beautiful. I always take a few photos of this barn but have never painted it.  The photo was not that great, I did a few sketches , cropped the photo and finally decided on a square format. The field in front was pretty with the wildflowers.  I used the pastel premier paper… it's texture is different from the Uart I am accustomed to. I decided to do an underpainting with nupastels, rubbed it in with some foam and spray it with a little fixative.  As I was layering in the pastels , something was not working.  The pastels I had chosen were not the right values. 

So I put the paper in the sink and washed off the pastel, blocked it to dry. I found the pastel premier paper to be as durable as the Uart!

underpainting

 The underpainting I ended up with was much more exciting, but I was still struggling with the color values. When this happens, I print off the reference photo in black and white.

Black and white reference photo

I saw why I was struggling…. the barn, trees and background were all very close in value. I thought about all the things I have learned about aerial perspective and knew I would need to make some adjustments to the color values to make the painting work. This painting was a struggle for me.  I was ready to give up on it, but I hated to waste the paper. So I started it over and I think I ended up with a better result.