Dark to Light: Creating Structure in Pastel
Dark to Light: Creating Structure in Pastel
Combine graphic lines with small strokes of bright color to emphasize form and texture in pastel.
By Yael Maimon
When I was a child, I loved drawing images from children’s books; I still do. My favorite book was and still is — not one, but two — Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. John Tenniel’s illustrations for these books made a great impression on me. I could spend hours staring at Tenniel’s artwork — done with so much skill and imagination.
I’ve always been fascinated by deer. They’re noble, graceful creatures and, during Alice’s walk through the wood, she meets a fawn. They walk together until they leave the forest; this is the moment the fawn remembers that it’s an animal and Alice is human, and it runs away. That scene is one of my favorites.
I decided to paint Alice with an adult deer instead of a young fawn for artistic reasons. Considering that a deer must have more wisdom and experience than a fawn, I thought aging the deer would make the encounter more meaningful. No matter what age Alice is, she’s a curious dreamer with fears to overcome. I wanted to interpret Alice’s character, while maintaining her true essence. Alice is you and I when we want to escape reality to Wonderland — when we wish to find a world of our own.
Demo: Making Purposeful Marks
Step 1: Choose reference Photo
I took several photographs of my young model with her dot-patterned blouse. I settled on this photo as a reference, eventually taking some artistic liberties to manipulate the background into forest scenery and adding the animal. Only after I had spent some time visualizing the theme of the painting did I make the preliminary study.
Step 2: Make preliminary study
I created this study to get a firm idea of what my composition would look like. I mapped out the lights, darks, and mid-tones, and focused on the large shapes and value masses.
Step 3: Establish composition
I chose a sheet of Sennelier La Carte Pastel Card in sienna and started with a charcoal drawing. When I work on a mid-toned surface, I start by blocking in either the lightest or darkest areas. Here I worked from dark to light — first blocking in the tree mass, the deer’s nose and eyes, and Alice’s pants.
Step 4: Introduce color
I applied mid-tone greens onto the background and midground with varying strokes. I also applied light strokes of green onto the deer and in Alice’s hair in order to integrate them both into the scene. In later stages, I would darken and simplify the background significantly, focusing the viewer’s attention on Alice and the deer.
Step 5: Block in clothing
Next I started to block in the figure. I applied moss gray green to the filled-in blouse. I also applied this color on the deer’s head and antlers. Then I added light strokes of cobalt blue and painted the butterfly bow on the blouse. Since the sienna color of my surface is similar to the natural color of my model, I didn’t feel the need to block in Alice’s face and arms.
Step 6: Paint the deer
I built up the deer’s form with loose, broad strokes of varying browns. Then I added sharp accents of burnt sienna and expressive strokes of intense blue and ultramarine. I also added blue to Alice’s hair. (I find soft pastel ideal for rendering deer. Capturing the fur’s texture can be done with minimal strokes, especially when working on sanded paper.)
Step 7: Add lights and highlights
The light source was coming from above and to the right. I added the lightest highlight of the painting with pigment in light magenta violet to the top of Alice’s right shoulder. I painted Alice’s hair with overlapping pastel layers of several greens. As I painted the light areas of Alice’s hair with permanent yellow green and yellow ochre, I made sure that none of the strokes were as light as the highlight on her shoulder. At this stage I also continued adding more color to the deer.
Step 8: Build up background and foreground
I went back in to the background to develop a more expressive, abstract approach. I used green in horizontal strokes and applied black, dark blue, and brown in vertical strokes. Then I added a few light lines on the upper portion of the painting to balance the composition. Next, I built up the blouse, introducing different pinkish and grayish hues. Painting all the nuances of color and value in the blouse was the most challenging.
Step 9: Add detail and pattern
During the final stage of painting Alice and Deer in the Enchanted Forest (pastel on sanded paper, 18×23), I aimed to “push and pull” Alice into sharp focus. I continued to work on the blouse to a high degree of finish, capturing the dot pattern with madder carmine. Most of the dots were smeared or applied subtly. Next, going back to the background, I re-established the darks. Finally, I added touches of colors that I had used on Alice’s blouse to the antlers. I refined the edges and colors all over the painting. Feeling that I had conveyed the desired mood and captured the magic of this scene, I signed the piece!
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