In the past few weeks I’ve completed two more pastel drawings that are based on two pencil drawings I did of the same subjects. My goal for both pieces is to give them a tonalist feel, and have the color, lighting, atmosphere and mood draw the viewer into the scene.
The first pastel is an imaginary landscape view across a river at dusk. The composition features a treeline on the far bank of a river in the middleground, backlit with the twilight sky in the background, with the trees and sky reflected in the water in the foreground. I used cooler blues and greens for the trees and riverbank, and a purple-to-orange gradation for the background sky area. I reflected those same colors in the water area at the bottom — my goal was to use the contrast of the cooler, darker trees against the warmer orange sky background to create a peaceful mood.
The second pastel is another imaginary landscape done in a contemporary tonalist style. It is of two hills and bushes at dusk, with the hills and bushes rendered in cool blues against a sky background with a blue to purple to yellow gradation. The yellow sunset highlight in the opening between the two sets of bushes serves as the piece’s focal point. I tried to use a layered composition in combination with a contrasting color palette to hopefully create an interesting and eye-catching piece.
The finished pastels are framed them in an 11×14 white frame with a white mat that has an 8×10 opening. If you’re interested in buying any of my pastel drawings, they’ll be available here for sale on the site soon!
The next step will be to turn these two pastels into 18×24 oil paintings, I’ll do a post about those paintings when they’re complete.
