Porch Light

I just finished this pastel painting "Porch Light". I have been working on it for several months and am excited to finally call it finished. It is always hard to declare a painting finished, because as long as it is not complete, it has the potential of being really wonderful. Once you say "it is finished", you must admit that it is what it is. It may have turned out even better than you had hoped when you first began, but more often than not, it falls short of what you imagined. Fortunately, one of my students offered to take the painting with her to Traverse City, to have it photographed at Vada Color. I had a delivery deadline of 6 p.m. last Friday. I finished it at 5 p.m., because my time was up.

I found this old house while on a painting trip last fall in Rockland Maine. I loved the way the late afternoon sun illuminated the white columns and the peeling paint. Instead of painting the entire house or a street scene with several houses, I selected a close view of just a portion of the porch. This allowed a greater emphasis on the peeling paint and the beautiful architectural details.

The colors of the reference photograph  intrigued me: ranging from yellow highlights, to blue shadows, with lots of unusual green colors in the mid-value range (see detail of the painting below).

 At first, I was concerned about how to paint the rich texture and color of the peeling paint without becoming bogged down in photo-realistic detail. Fortunately, it turned out to be much easier than I had feared. I began by dragging several different colors of the same value of soft pastel sticks over the surface of the Wallis sanded paper.Then I used slightly darker colors to indicate the places where the siding showed through the paint. Rather than following the reference photograph closely, I simply let the pastel pigment jump and skip over the surface of the paper, by dragging the side of the pastel stick very lightly over the paper. Finally, I created the feeling of dark shadows below the peeling paint, and highlights on the edges of the curling paint with pastel pencils or really soft pastels.

Now that "Porch Light" is complete, my easel is empty and ready for a new project. I have several pastel  projects underway: a sketch for a pastel painting of an anchor and thumbnail sketches of an abandoned house.I also have several watercolor demonstrations that are partially complete, and a new group project to begin this week for the watercolor class.