Let's Start at the Very Beginning ....

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to begin ............ but not with ABC as in the song but with a thumbnail. 

A new painting is on the easel and it all began with a fabulous sky and a thumbnail. 

Here is the thumbnail, and a working title, Finding Wamth in Winter Skies. Classically we were taught to start a painting with a thumbnail, a small line drawing, a value study and finally a colour study. Being honest, I normally don't go in for all of that, my concern is that having worked through all of that my actual painting would lose a lot of its spontaneity, on the other hand you do sort out most of a paintings ''problems'' this way and can go at it with a little less fear. 

Usually working from plein air sketches, reference photos and a thumbnail gets my  grey cells revved up and makes me aware of the areas of the painting that can be tricky. Dodgy areas for me are the edges right/left where the painting ends, how much of a ''fade out'' there should be if any? Compositional issues like where the horizon should be and for example the balance between focal point and detail, I can obsess over negative spaces between branches and basically then lose the plot. 

This is one of the reference photos, obviously here the sky is in focus, but what really grabbed me here was the line of yellow/orange on the horizon, so now it's all about trying to balance, clouds, sky and the bare tree branches. 

Getting down to business now with my first dry wash of pastel, I always set my lights and darks first, 

Your first layer has to be dramatic, brave and fearless, the mid values then take the drama away. If you stay too tame here you will really have difficulties trying to get those darks and lights back at the end. Pastel is fickle and too much fudging around ends in a grey mud, this stage is the time to go for it! 

Here of course I'll be trying to keep that drama, because that's what this painting is all about!