Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Painting Rocks

Coastal Acadia
12 x 18 soft pastels on Kitty Wallis Professional White
by Miki Willa

I really like to look at paintings of rocks. When I was doing watercolor, I learned to do pretty good rocks. I used wet in wet, dry brush, palette knife, and credit cards to create rocks with texture and interest. That was a long time ago. Now, I and trying to recreate the same effect using pastels. I think this is my best effort to date.
My husband says you have to look at rocks to paint them. They are all so different. The rounded smooth ones from rivers and the shore are the most difficult to paint, for me. I like the ones with planes and angles. MC Johnson did a short post about painting rocks where he talked about using short straight strokes to indicate roundness. His rocks are very good.
This is from a photo I took on a walk from our campsite in Acadia National Park in Maine to an overlook on the coast. Coastal Maine is known for wonderful rock formations and islands on the horizon. I took a series of photos from this spot to create this painting.

2 comments:

Willa said...

Congratulations on another great painting!

Tom Willa said...

There is wonderful sense of depth to this painting. The simultaneous contrast between the sky, water and land mass is dynamic. The sky adds to the sense of aeral perspective.
You are a winner of one free matting for any pastel painting of your choice
Love T