Painting with Pastels: Mountain Stream

Here's an interesting fact about parcel paper.

It's not as smooth as regular paper.

It has teeth, so to speak, to hold a pastel paint or chalk.

In fact, some artists use very well surfaces like sandpaper to paint on.

If you're feeling adventurous, I suggest you try.

But first, here in the studio, we'll continue to use the pencil on paper.

So what are we going to paint this week on our paper?

Stick around and you'll find out when painting with pastels returns.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to our studio.

Are you ready to paint with pastels?

We sure hope you are, because we are ready for you.

As we mentioned in the introduction, size really matters when it comes to a painting.

You could choose a larger size board, or you could choose a smaller one that is entirely up to you or the medium though what you want to paint today if you step to the board with me.

We chose a smaller size paper as you can see here, and we cut it just so that we can fit exactly what we want in there.

And as I mentioned also, there is a wide variety of pastel that you can choose from.

But we are going to use the smaller sticks today.

And so now we are going to start.

But before we do, I'll explain a little bit more what we're going to do here.

I'd like to do a little forest here with a waterfall coming our way here.

Now, this is a small and tight enough composition, and we can do that right here and have it all fit in here nice and tight.

Before we do, we going to put our sky just in this spot right here, because this will all be covered with trees and ornamental rocks.

So let's pick a sky color.

And from here, I don't really have a sky color on this medium here.

So I am going to select it in the slightly larger one.

I'm going to take the darker blue, the lighter blue, and then we'll take the white from the harder pastel there.

So from here, what I'll do is using the side of the pastel.

Just going to fill this little area here, only.

And just to have an idea of where my water would fall.

I'm basically going to have it come out here this way and then drop right here.

Great.

Putting this blue back.

Can I use a darker blue just to give my sky some texture here?

Perfect.

That's practically all I wanted the soft pastels for.

Now I can go and use the harder pastel.

You see the difference?

The stick is a bit smaller, and it's much harder when you apply it.

But with this, you can have a lot more flexibility with your textures.

So I'm just adding a little bit of white here with it, and then I'll come back to this afterwards.

Now I have a choice I could blended right now, but again, I choose not to.

Now, using the black, as I mentioned, we are going to have some trees here and some trees all the way in the front here.

But what's more important is really the rocks that are going to shape my little river here with the waterfall.

You don't see many of those in the Virgin Islands, but when it rains, you can see little rivers going down to national parks.

Saint John, as you can see, him doing the rocks everyday, not really shaped yet.

He just basically ideas of where they're going to end up.

So that's quite all right.

Using the side, just giving them the shape that I want.

And right here make sure that your paper is safely anchored.

Now, this here is a pencil board.

It's a lot harder than the paper.

And it is so nice because it takes all of the pastel grains inside and holds it for me.

Okay.

Now, these are black, but they're not going to be black rocks because we're not painting from Saint Kitts.

And we know Saint Kitts have the black sand on the beach.

But this are going to be regular rocks.

So what we'll do, we're going to add the rock texture to them by adding the White on top.

And it's all going to come together for us when we blend it and just applying its number the normal way right on top.

So this is where you can actually shape the rock to make it a smooth rock.

A rough one, one of a jagged edge.

You decide.

And of course, as you mention, my trees are going to end up here.

Different kind of trees.

What's nice with this?

Because of the size of the paper on the board, I can add a lot of nice bright colors, some fall colors here, and it's going to come out really nice.

Once you have all of these in place.

It's interesting once you have a painting in your head and it's taking shape in your mind, but it's still a surprise.

So the paper, because I know what I can add wherever on the paper doesn't look like much, but you will get the idea.

So.

Okay, now, from here I want to add some colors for the background.

There will be some red because I did mention the fall.

I will also have some green for the hard pastel.

I don't really have the dark green that I want, but I will use it from the soft one and I place that here and I have so much time in the end that I could blend afterwards.

It feels like sculpting sometimes.

You are adding the layers after layers and then after that you make it all come together.

Sometimes you may think, Well, you know, this green is too dark.

It's okay.

I add my yellow and then I have the green that I want.

I don't want too much green.

So I think I'll leave it at that here.

Now, before I continue, I would like to blend my sky just to get it out of the way.

Starting from the base here, I'm moving up so that I have a nice sky without touching the side where the green and the red where the trees are because of the size of the painting.

We have to make sure that all the details are inside connected to each other, because once you have a larger size, it might be more forgiving, but the smaller size you have to make sure that everything connects because from a distance it has to look almost perfect.

Great.

Now, next, I'm just going to blend some of the trees.

These are not actual trees.

They just outlines because we're coming back with the colors to make this painting set just the way we want it.

Notice I'm not blending it in.

Just small strikes.

I'm giving it an interesting texture because this is going to be the backdrop of what I'm going to add afterwards.

So when you look past the trees, you see shadows and you see things in the background.

These will be what you're seeing to see.

Now, I have the rocks that, as we mentioned earlier, we added some whites to them just so that we could give them the shape of gray rocks that we're going to blend those.

Because what we'll do around them.

Well, put some tall grass to cover the edge.

There you go.

Because the top has the white in the bottom as the doc gives you the bottom shadow as well, makes it ready to receive whatever you want to put next to it.

Don't worry about what's not touch at this point.

What has not been touched because we have time to finish our so-called masterpiece, make sure that the one in the front is really nice and visible, and then we're going to add some moisture on top of it because it's going to be a wet rock with all this water flowing from there.

Nice.

Great.

Now we can play because we have all of our elements there at this point.

So I would like some yellow because yellow always brings out.

So if I want a yellow tree right here using the tip of the pastel, I'm just pushing it in in all direction, but pushing it too hard because I really don't want to go back to blending this.

I need some yellows here and there.

What else I can do?

Well, that's a nice red.

So reminds me of driving in New Hampshire right down to full season and the king of Mango Trail, where everything is red, yellow and gold.

Such a beautiful sight.

We have time to play.

Now a green one.

But we put some green before.

But it's okay.

We can highlight with this.

Remember, we just making dots over into all the different areas.

So that covers some parts for us.

And we just moving in from the back to the front and it's okay, we have time.

Okay, we'll just add some grass here in between the rocks and we'll go back to them afterwards.

With all this water, they'll be nice and green, tall grass.

And remember what we learned about perspective.

The closer you get, the taller they can get.

And we can highlight that afterwards with some yellow and some white.

Great.

Just touch up your paintings.

The little fiery bush that you've painted.

Okay, now you're just going to highlight some of the grass that I've placed there with some yellows right over the green.

And this up outline each one of the blades.

Okay.

Now you notice I have this section here in the front that I've left a bit dull squared.

All right.

What I'll do with the White gonna start right here using the side, moving it back and forth.

Just enough.

I have one tree here and a tree here.

Okay.

And one here.

I think that will be enough.

Now, I have this Sienna that I'm just putting along the edge of it, using the corner of the pesto and just pushing that along there and here as well.

Great.

Now, blending time, just pushing it all down together once straight down.

Same as this and same for this.

Only over it.

Now, going back.

Just making some markings with the edge of the tip of the pesto.

It's like marking it as a wall and sliding my hand down right down.

Perfect.

Great.

Now that I have this, I can take a darker brown where the shadows fall again, sliding my hand down.

Make sure that it all stays inside the picture.

Great.

Just making some small branches.

Okay.

Just getting my green back, using the side.

I'm just pushing this and it's a cover part of the body.

Same as here now is some lighter green.

Same thing.

I'm just touching the top.

And then from here, I can touch up the base of this.

Now that I have all these elements in place, I can play with the water.

Now, we've already established where it's going to run.

Now, if my white shock, it's going to have some fun.

Have it fall over here, Fall down here, fall down here.

Here And over.

Remember when it splashes, it lays marks and my water comes falling down here.

You want to mark the top of the stones, reflecting the light from the wetness.

And with this now I have time to highlight the top of my trees from this intention to the forest.

You can almost hear the sound of the water coming down to such a beautiful, rainy day still accentuating the top of the rocks here.

I still have time to add some more blades of grass over my daughter and I can't even do this with the black pastels so small, yet so efficient.

The way that everything falls together here, which take a step back.

I like it.

I like it a lot.

So what I'll do, I'll just put my name here at the bottom, right here.

Perfect start.

Well, that says after you write your name, you cannot add anything else.

The painting?

I don't think so.

And I don't remember reading that anywhere.

So I'm just adding.

Perfect.

Great.

How are you happy with your painting friends?

We sure hope that you are because this was small, concise, but yet turn out to be a very beautiful painting if you did not get to where you want it.

So don't get discouraged.

Join us next week while we take on something more challenging with painting with pesto.

See you then.

Hi Friends I'm Frantz Coulanges and I hope you had as much fun as I did with that last painting.

Although the show is over, the fun doesn't have to stop.

Join the conversation and connect with me and other fans of the show by visiting us on Facebook.

You can ask questions about what we've painted, post comments, or even suggest what you would like me to paint.

I would love to hear from you.

Just log on to w WW dot facebook.com slash painting with pastels.