Our demonstrator was Andrew Anderson-Bell, who did a demonstration of a pastel landscape.
The meeting was held in the Guild Hall, First Congregational Church (middle side door), Sanborn Street, Reading, Wednesday December 9th, 2015 at 7:30 p.m.
Andrew uses his iPad for reference material.
He used the iPad for taking the photos as well as displaying them.
The Edit mode on the iPad displays useful grid lines,
dividing the image into the normal thirds.
From the image, Andrew makes thumbnail sketches to capture the
large color shapes. The bottom sketch is just black and white - no grays.
From the reference material and the sketches, he blocks in
the shapes with soft pastel pigment as an underpainting.
He then washes the underpainting with rubbing alcohol.
The alcohol wash sets the pigment into the paper
so that it no longer sits on the surface. That allows him
to apply more layers of pastel on top of the underpainting.
After the underpainting has dried, he starts the application
of the pastels directly onto the paper.
The complementary colors in the underpainting are allowed to peek
through the top layer and make the colors more lively. You
can see the red underpainting showing through in the sky.
Once the basic painting is done, Andrew sketches where the
Queen Anne's Lace will go on the grassy area in the foreground.
The Queen Anne's Lace is applied with white.
Here is the finished painting.
Since the pigment is supposed to go to the edges of the paper,
Andrew trimmed off the white edges that were left.
Finally, we see the painting in a frame.
You can see more of Andrew's work at his web site, http://anderson-bellstudio.com/
Andrew is represented in many galleries and is a member of many art associations. He is a resident of North Haven Island, Maine and Ipswich, Massachusetts. He paints familiar landscape scenes in both locations. He also engages in fine art photography.