Recycling experiment ...

A lesson in underpainting...
31/01/2019
Materials aren’t cheap and since I discovered Fisher 400 paper, which is most definitely not cheap, I want to use every scrap! So after reading a blog post of a pastel artist I really admire (Karen Margulis http://kemstudios.blogspot.com/search/label/underpaintings) I thought I’d give underpainting a go for a quick horse study.

I wanted to experiment using the colour of the wash to represent the shadows and warm tones, so as to use as little pastel as possible to represent the highlights. First I brushed the excess pastel of the old painting off, then painted a thin-ish burnt siena acrylic wash over the remaining pastel. The remaining pastel mixed with the paint and changed the colour a bit, but wasn’t too muddy. After sketching out the horse in charcoal, I started adding the colour. It was a real challenge for me to be really controlled about not adding too much colour - a good lesson!

It was fun! I think I could have used even less pastel on the horse’s body and really let the background colour come through. I tried it again on a black wash to sketch a fisherman in Burma... also on my blog.

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