Sandia Foothills

After the International Society of Pastel Societies biennial convention the end of May, I attended a two-day workshop taught by well known artist Deborah Secor. One of the paintings I did was this view of the Sandia Foothills, not far from where we live. I did an "underpainting" in colors that were complementary to the final product. If you look closely, you can see the underpainting colors showing through. The background hill, for example, has a yellow underpainting with a lavender final coat of soft pastel.



Some friends and I started plein air paintings at this site and took photos. I found, when I returned home to the studio, that my initial painting was washed out...no contrast of values, no real colors. I worked with it for a while, and after maybe 3 times wiping out what I'd done, I finally arrived at what was "okay".

So, I decided I'd spray on some wonderful new fixative (SpectraFix) to help hold the powdery pastel dust to the surface. I grabbed the spray bottle, spritzed the painting, and OMG....the color was running down the paper!!!! I'd grabbed the wrong bottle and instead of fixative, it was plain water. I had battled so long with this piece and now this!!!! Nothing to do but wait for it to dry and see how much damage had been done. Well, there was plenty. When you paint in watercolors, too much water means the paint "blooms" and that is what happened here. So back to the drawing board to see if I could fix it.

I reworked it (again!) and spritzed it lightly with the proper fixative but I guess because of the change in chemistry from the water, the fixative darkened the painting. This is typical when using most fixatives, but SpectraFix is unique in that it doesn't darken the painting. However, in this case, it did. That left me with only two options, toss it or fix it. So I redid it one more time, and this time did NOT "fix" it and here is the final result.

I added more color and contrast in the final product, and it seems livelier to me.

The two paintings (top one and bottom one) are 9 x 12 on Art Spectrum Colorfix sanded paper, unframed, no mat and are available for sale $100 each.

If you like either one, you can reach me by clicking on the "contact" link.

Now, I'm going to see what other adventures in painting I can have.

Till later..................