Following the Rules of Painting

Yellowstone River Meander

12 x 18 soft pastels on Kitty Wallis Professional White

by Miki Willa

When I first saw this scene, I fell in love with the colors. The river was so blue surrounded by several shades of ochre grasses. This is an area where the buffalo really do roam. The lodge pole pines line the tops of the rolling hills to add a wonderful dark contrast to an otherwise light landscape.

I did several small sketches before I started this painting. I had trouble getting the shapes of the small islands at first. The shapes were very important to the overall effect of the scene. I really wanted to share how I felt when I first saw this place. I feel pretty good about the final result. There were, however, some things that might have gotten in the way.

I have studied pastel painting for about seven years now, focusing on landscape painting for the last two or three. I have been learning all the "rules" for representational painting. I understand the principles of aerial perspective, value, temperature, focal area, and more. Sometimes, though, I think the rules get in the way of what I am trying to convey. For instance, I know that yellow is the first "color" to disburse in the atmosphere, so that in the foreground, the yellow is warm and intense, the mid ground yellow begins to get cooler tan, and by the distance it is a cool grey. However, this is not what I saw in the scene above. I know that an artist has to use these "rules" to trick the viewer into seeing what you saw, but I sometimes have trouble swallowing it. For this painting, I hit on a compromise by adding cooler grays to the distant hills while still using a pale yellow. Rules, after all, are often broken when it comes to art.

Rethinking an old painting

Fall on the River

9 x 12 soft pastels on Art Spectrum Colourfix

by Miki Willa

When Tom and I set up the new studio, we put a cork board on one wall to hang newly finished pieces so we could see them to think about them over time before they were put away or framed. For a long time, I have been looking at this painting and liking it less and less. This morning, I awoke thinking about how to change it. This is the result.

Yesterday, I drove into Seattle along the west shore of Lake Washington. The colors of the fall trees were spectacular. I kept thinking about them all evening and this morning. I decided to work them into the trees along the bank of the Green River. If you look at the old painting, there are no fall colors, but plenty of deciduous trees. I also took out the path that simply wasn't working in the old painting. While I like some aspects of this painting much better, I still think I have a long way to go with rivers. I am just happy I got the fall colors in. I want to do many more of these.

Painting Reflections in Pastel

Little Saco River, Maine

12 x 18 soft pastels on Kitty Wallis Professional White

by Miki Willa

When we were in Eastern Maine, we left our campground in search of a covered bridge crossing the Little Saco River. We wanted to find a place to do some pleine air painting. We had all our painting gear and we were ready. The leaves were beginning to turn along the river, and we wanted to do our first fall color paintings. When we got to the bridge, we were excited to see several areas that would be great to set up to paint. Then we got out of the truck. The mosquitoes were so thick, breathing meant the possibility of taking in some of the critters. Deet was no match. We grabbed several photos, dove back into the truck, and drove back up the river. On the way, we saw this beautiful bush that cried to be painted. Photos were taken quickly and stored for studio reference.

Since I want to get better at rivers, I decided to work on this one this week. I did a dry underpainting, paying attention to values rather than local color. The scene was all about the turning bush and the reflections on the slow moving river. I started with the bush and worked out to the sides, putting the reflections in as I went. I kept in mind the unequal triangle approach to points of interest, with the bush being the main focal area. I went with local color in the final painting. If I do this one again, I think I will push the fall foliage to the brighter reds, yellows, and oranges. I would like the next river I paint to have more speed to it. I still have much to learn about reflections, but I also have to learn to paint moving water.

Gibbons River, Yellowstone

Gibbon River - en plein air

12 x 18 soft pastels on Kitty Wallis Professional White

by Miki Willa

I did not do as much plein air painting on our trip as I originally planned. During our third day in Yellowstone, however, we found a very nice picnic area on the Gibbon River. It was a perfect day. There was a shady spot right where I wanted it to be. There were no bugs, it being too cold at night for them to be around in the morning. I didn't have to drag all my stuff very far. In short, it was comfortable enough for me to paint outside.

I don't think the river was as full or as deep as it looks in this painting. I really need to work on moving water. Maybe that should be what my series is about. Any ideas about who I should study in this area will be appreciated.

Green and More Green

Green on the Green

9 x 12 soft pastels on Art Spectrum Colourfix

Miki Willa

This is the Green River in Flaming Geyser State Park, Washington. I did this one using a complementary color underpainting. I should have taken WIP photos to show you some of the amusing problems I had with this painting. When I thought it was finished, I stepped back with Tom and discovered that the river looked as if it were going to slide diagonally off the page toward the bottom right corner. I hadn't paid enough attention to my water strokes. Then I noticed that I had created a perfect formal garden hedge of flowers all along the river bank. The path was all one value from front to back. I decided to wait until this morning to fix all of this. A few carefully placed strokes with my handy-dandy foam brush took out much of the hedge and helped to fix the river. I found my favorite purple for the nearest part of the path. Then I added the strokes in the river to make it show movement in the correct direction. We were there on a very cool early June day when the river was still running high, and I think I captured both the cool weather and the full river.

The title? It was a very lush green place along a river named Green.