Start to Finish...

It's like 10 miles of 2-lane/ on a South Dakota wheat plain/ in the middle of a hard rain ("Steady On," Shawn Colvin) 
Sorry, it was going through my head all the way through So. Dak.



On our drive home from a trip to Wisconsin last month, we experienced some very wet, foggy, and at times snowy weather across Minnesota and South Dakota. The whole drive, I kept saying under my breath, "Dang, this is so BEAUTIFUL!" and my husband, each time, responded, "You're joking, right?" and "Are you being sarcastic?"  To each of his questions, I apparently looked at him blankly, as if not understanding the language he was speaking. I suppose I was so taken with all the painting ideas that my right brain had taken my left brain hostage. Ha ha! Has that ever happened to you?

Anyway, you may have deduced that I find aesthetic pleasure in weather that would be otherwise described as nasty, bleak, or [insert your own negative adjective here.]  The aforementioned road trip left my mind racing, my sketchbook full of thumbnails, and my camera full of blurry photos shot through the window of a speeding truck.  Though I prefer to paint on location when I can, memory work is useful, and sometimes the ideas worked out in your mind when you can't paint lead to some interesting results in the studio.

Just for fun, I thought I'd share with you the process of one of these kinds of paintings, start to finish.



The idea started w/ a couple sketches and notes I made in my sketchbook as we barrelled down I-90. In case you're curious what the scrawl says: warm, wet gold of spring fields fading to gray - almost white- of fog  ribbon of silvery light with w/ wet earth around edges very dk brwn.  Should be about texture, soft transition, interesting division of space by rivulet of drainage.



I create pastel paintings on a variety of substrates, but most often, as in this example, it's Wallis paper (museum grade) mounted to acid free foam core, then toned with an acrylic or watercolor wash.  This is an 11x14 (I have full sheets of Wallis mounted by my framer.  I often will tone the full sheet and then cut that down into various sizes for use in the studio or the field).



Next step: using a warm-ish, fairly dark pastel, I first mark the center of each side as a reminder to avoid cutting spaces in half.  Then I make a "map" of the most important elements and shapes.  This painting will be about texture, progression of color and value from the front of the picture plane to the back (bottom to top) and an interesting division of space.

Here, I begin adding color, thinking somewhat in reverse.  My final piece will be about subtlety and grays, so I begin with much more saturated colors than I will use in the later stages of the painting.  I know that I want my warmest tones in the front (though it will be mainly golden greens, rather than the golds noted in my sketchbook) fading to a cool gray at the high horizon line.  So I begin with oranges under the green areas.  I stick with violets under the cool gray areas, as I want the most vibration to be in the foreground. 

Here, I've massed in the big areas with the colors that I want to show through at the end.  These colors will influence the final colors but will not be the dominant color of the painting.  I'm always trying to match values, regardless of color.

The neighbor's cat comes by to check out what I'm working on.  He's fairly critical.  You can't tell, but he's glaring at that tree.  I should have listened to him from the beginning...



Next step is to scrub my underpainting colors into the tooth of the Wallis paper.  This eliminates too much of the tooth being swallowed up by the first layer and allows me to work many more layers into the paper without worrying about fixative.  I just use an old bristle oil brush.  This is a great way to use brushes that are too worn for oil painting.  Don't use your good brushes - the tooth of the pastel paper will eat them up!



Here's what it looks like after a good scrubbing.

The scrubbing softened some of the shapes and darks, so I go back and re-establish those.

Now I start adding the greens I want in the foreground, beginning with the darker shades and building up layers.

I continue building local color, trying for variety of texture within the grass areas.  I also am addressing edges, looking at how the edges of the major shapes come together.

Here, I begin dragging grays over the whole painting like a glaze, starting at the top (background, horizon line) and dragging down, working with the lightest, more bluish grays at the top and progressing to slightly darker and more violet grays as I come towards the foreground.  I added a tiny bit of water in the lower right foreground to continue the reverse "S" shape and lead the eye through the foreground mass.




Rivulet, pastel on mounted paper, 11x14.
©Jennifer L. Hoffman, 2011.

 As you can see, I removed the tree (as Sid the cat suggested) and eliminated the edges from the water in the distance, making the ground disappear into the fog, as this was my initial intention. I also really worked on the edges of the water shapes in the foreground and simplifying the large grass areas. I think it's finished, though I'd like to do several of these paintings, exploring the idea of breaking the space into interesting shapes, and pushing the abstraction even farther. We'll see where that goes.