Quick Art Trip Around the World
Drive Towards the Light: Today's pastel edits of landscapes from St. Remy, France; Central Coast, Australia; and Borrego Springs, California.
The Zen of painting/drawing outdoors is a special feeling, more so when it involves a journey. The Central Coast pastel came about visiting my niece for the first time, my only condition was that I would paint each day somewhere. She took me to this marvelous place, and we spent quiet time while I drew. Half way around the world, finding crazy family traits with her, and orange-ochre sand.
I love, love Borrego Springs, its an old California desert, high-desert place with some remaining 50's buildings, with hole in the wall Mexican dives (great food), and this insane geographical slope that starts at foothills and descends 30 or so miles to the Salton Sea. It is a fantasy of mine to live there and paint hundreds of landscapes, but it is hot -- and I find it easier to paint when its cold ...
Last year a taught a workshop in France, the first day we visited St. Paul's Asylum, where Van Gogh had one of his greatest years painting. They grounds where beautiful. After the finish of the workshop, I went back there on my own and just drew several places on the grounds surrounding the asylum. I was intensely emotional. so gratitude that I have been blessed with the life of an artist.
The pastel technique I developed from drawing live seems really simple, works really well, and oddly it is teachable.
I start with dark paper and drive towards the light.
The composition is sketched with a pastel color with one shade up in tone from the paper, but it is any color that looks awesome with the color of the paper;
I worked in spaced, about 1/4 inch diagonal lines because you can layer subtly, keeping the colors fresh, think da Vinci ink sketches.
Start with blocking out general colors, the green of the plants, blue of the sky, brown of the grasses -- but only one step up in tone from the paper. Thereafter, when I need to lighten, again only one step lighter in tone from the preceding layer.
Ultimately you get to the lightest areas, which might have 15 or 20 layers of pastel.
The kicker, is every lighter coat you must ask yourself if it needs to be warmer or cooler. For instance a final result of a light gray might be several layers of greens and pinks, each lighter, and alternating between warm and cool until you reach the final gray.
What is wonderful about this technique is that you don't know in advance what the final colors, there will be these incredible shifts of simmering warm and cool colors.
My philosophy of landscape painting is that it is a dialog between me the artist and the raw, non-man-made, universe. It cuts through the bullshit that humans are capable of -- there is something so pure about how beautiful the world is, the magic of light and color, and that we as humans can perceive it. Perception is a fundamental tool of coping with world.
When heart, senses, and philosophy come together it makes for a sublime experience. It is only very hard work, but worth it.
Michael Newberry, Idyllwild, 10/7/2020