Thirteen: Dual Ring Ceremony

Dual Ring Ceremony, a soft pastel on 5x7 charcoal grey Clairfontaine PastelMat.

1. Today, I'm sticking with a mostly neutral palette to capture a snowy day in Verona. I've quickly blocked in the angular snow-covered roof structure, the stone wall facing the viewer, and the bell tower structure in the foreground.

2. In the second step, I corrected some of the structural angles and used the side of a stick to scumble in a pale aqua sky, taking care to allow some of the background gray to peek through.

3. I chose a few more higher values to add more variety to the sky, using angular strokes and a few stipples to show the falling snow. I left some of the dark of the paper bleed through around the stiles of the bell tower and in the shadow areas of the building structure. Ultimately, I pulled out a white, black, gray, and dark brown pastel pencil to firm out the structure of the bells. I used my SpectraFix fixative again today after several days without it's use. I need to repair the extra wide swath of cream under the second bell.

4. To finalize this piece, I made a few minor corrections to some of the snow-covered areas and to the flakes falling under a mild, but constant wind. I ever so rarely work with pastels in mostly neutrals, but the way snow mutes everything, this seemed like the perfect approach.