Kentucky Hills under paintings

 In yesterday's post I mentioned borders was having their store closing sale. Last night they had taken the prices down even further. I bought Richard McKinley's Pastel Pointers. I follow his blog on the artist network and have been wanting to get his books for a while now and with one on sale decided to pick it up.
If you look at his work the first thing you might notice is the under painting that shines through his pastel application. I've been using under paintings for my pastels for a while but only using pastels with turpenoid for the medium. Today seemed like a good day to try a watercolor under painting, so I did two of them. The first was one that I wanted to finish with watercolor and the second with pastel. He talks of arranging shapes in value masses that way you don't jump around the painting and exaggerate certain areas to an extreme. The reason I chose to do the under painting that would be finished in watercolor first is because while the pastel under painting is drying the watercolor painting can be quickly finished in a loose style. Then when the watercolor is done you can start on the pastel already warmed up. This seems like a good strategy for now and I will use this for plein air until I'm burned out.

This is the watercolor under painting for the watercolor finished painting. The thought behind this was to get everything massed in while staying at the lighter end of the value scale for the masses that way they could stay as highlights and be darkened where needed. I like the way the hills roll down in Kentucky. It reminds me of the car trips to see my mothers side of the family. I think the dark value masses frame the rolling nature of the hills well in this painting.

This is the under painting for the pastel that I will eventually get to during the second half of this round of paintings. I tried to get at the average value for the masses on this one. Also the value map changed on this under painting from the previous. I decided to push the tree above the foreground trees back to showcase it. The shape of it was interesting as it was the only one that fanned out and let a lot of the hillside behind it shine through.That will be a lot easier for me to show with pastels at this point than watercolors so i went that way in this painting.

Anyway if you are a fan of McKinley's I would recommend getting the book. Most of the stuff on it can be found on his blog, but it is nice to have a physical copy to flip through when you need some motivation. Also the DVD included with it was great and the ideas sink faster when you see him explaining them.