Speaking of Art Blog

Dunes Creek, pastel, 9.5x9.5"

This is my newest pastel painting, of a little creek that runs through the IN Dunes State Park and then spills out into Lake Michigan at the beach.  Last winter I visited the shoreline at the park right after it had snowed pretty heavily.  Everything was frozen except for a little ribbon of the creek whose shallow unfrozen water was reflecting the beautiful blue sky out on the beach.

Dunes Creek reference photo

Here is the reference photo.  As you can see, the snow is basically shades of light, medium, and dark blue and then white, that’s it.  I wanted to make the snow coloring more interesting, but I was stumped at first for how to go about it.  Then I had an idea.  I took the reference photo, and using Photoshop I removed all the color.  Then I lessened the contrast and darkened the whole image a bit.  That revealed what I was hoping to see more clearly – the differentiation between the slight changes in value (shading) in the snow.  Then with Photoshop I drew lines showing where the edges of those changes were.  It was a values/shape map of the snow.  Aha, this gave me a game plan.  I would start with light blue in the background part of the snow out by the horizon line, and with each shape that came closer to the viewer I’d gradually add some more violet and red-violet to the shapes, interspersing them with white patches where the photo showed the lightest shaded shapes.  Since violet and red-violet are warmer colors than blue, their addition would help pull them forward in space compared to the distant color blue.  With snow, the changes in value are very slight.  So, changing the color rather than making a dramatic change in value gives a rich and believable effect to a snow scene.

black & white reference photo with edges of snow shapes shown

I printed my photo of the mapped-out shapes and kept it close at hand while I worked on the piece.  It was so very helpful.  Throwing in random colors doesn’t work for me.  I would much rather follow a map and use my color knowledge along the way.  This was a way to achieve that goal.  I highly recommend it if you find yourself lost in a sea of one color and want to improvise to jazz things up.  Just be sure your shifts in color with snow are subtle with no abrupt changes.  Think soft, soft, soft transitions.  BTW, I also made sure to use the same colors in my sky that I used in my snow, just darker values of them.  That created a unified scene and delivered the whole snowy package, top to bottom.  Happy winter.