Tuesday, November 2, 2010



House on the Point 16 x 20 pastel on board

This painting, from Westport, Mass. was done on Ampersand pastel board using a water color underpainting and a lot of hard pastel. I finished it with a minimum of soft pastel. The sky, however, is all soft.

I took several pictures of this house and knew it was something I really wanted to paint. I like the progression of boat to shed to house with the strong lights and darks. I thought about it a long time and knew that I wanted to mix a lot of colors in the darks and decided to work with hard pastel. I did a color study, using a green sky and red roofs, along with aqua in the lighted areas of the shed and really liked it. I added the buoys to the right side of the shed to give a little more interest to the shadowed side.

I like this house because it could be almost anywhere. It is New England weather-beaten shingle, but the style of the buildings doesn't say "New England." I could see this house along the Chesapeake and did think about adding an oyster boat, but decided that would make it too busy.

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