Monday 1 February 2016

Reflections in the water - soft pastel work


One of my favourite photographs taken at Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary. It has been on my laptop since last year or so. I finally decided to give it a try in my way. I started off by selecting the black coloured Canson Mi Teintes paper. I started off by simplifying the bigger shapes and coloured 
them as a whole using the soft pastel medium. Blended the colours using my fingers. 
Then I fixed the layer with Winsor and Newton fixative.

In the second layer I added the tree trunks, foliage and other details. Signed at the bottom left 
with a white pastel pencil. I have also made use of the black charcoal pencil at places especially
to create the thin branches.



Solitude
Soft pastel painting on Canson Mi Teintes paper
Size 6" X 9"

What is most challenging in any forest landscape is the greens. No matter how many shades 
you have, you still fall short of the right shade. Unlike water colours, oils and acrylics
it is not easy to get the green shades by mixing different colours. Moreover with
my past experience I know for sure that if I use more than two colours on each
other it creates a muddy effect and the freshness of the colour fades away.

I have created a few more small Demo works in soft pastel medium and I shall
be posting them soon.

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