I have just finished a pastel which has been added to the pastel gallery called “Ruins Canyon”. Following is a series of six photos of the picture from beginning to completion.
I work out the composition on tracing paper and then transfer it to Soft Umber Art Spectrum Colourfix Pastel Paper. The soft Umber gives me a good mid-tone to start with. For landscapes I usually put in the sky and then work from upper left to lower right starting with harder pastels (Faber-Castells and Nupastels) and working in the softer pastels (Rembrandt, Alphacolor, Art Spectrum and Sennelier). If there is detail in areas I will use Carbothello pastel pencils but I don’t use pencils a lot. Once I have worked down to the lower right I will go back and balance out the entire picture tweeking the darks and lights and colors until they look right. At this stage I like to set it aside and come back to see what areas need further work. Check out the finished piece in the gallery.
As promised…the completed painting “Anasazi Tourists” and the rest of our honeymoon adventure!
Anasazi Tourists
We were married at Sipapu Natural Bridge on October 1, 2007 at 9 a.m. Our plan was to honeymoon in Owl canyon, so we headed back to the car and were off to Owl Canyon (18 miles away). Once we arrived, we packed our backpacks and started hiking down just as several clouds started rolling in. This canyon is quite steep so our descent was slow. By 2 p.m. there was a steady rain which made the scramble down the final boulder slide quite challenging. The rain had caused many streams to form and made for some slippery crossings. We worked our way down to a pouroff by 5 p.m., set up camp and had a wet supper. We were drained from the long events of the day and turned in early. (Real romantic, huh?) At about 1:00 a.m. we were awakened by a BIG thunderstorm that seemed to be right over our site. It rained so hard that it even came through our rain fly. Although I’ve never experienced a flash flood before, that was exactly what I was thinking when I thought I heard a freight train coming from the top of the canyon. I told my new bride to get dressed…we had to head for higher ground! The pouroff we were camped near had suddenly turned into Niagara Falls! We hustled out of our tent and headed for a ledge to huddle under, hoping our tent would be there when we returned. About 2 hours later the rain lessened and we returned to our site. The water level had risen quite a bit and came very close to our tent but we were relieved to see it was still there. When the storm subsided we climbed back into our tent for a few more hours sleep.
The next morning dawned sunny and warm, Niagara Falls was back to its normal trickle and life was good! Needless to say, we will never forget our honeymoon night.
From upper left: Small Anasazi ruin; upper Owl Canyon; Pouroff site
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