Number 4: Snow Fall

Day 4 of my Pastel-a-Day endeavor involved getting myself totally in an undistracted creative mode, pulling out my favorite surface, and finding a good snow photo to serve as the reference. It's been much of a snowflakeless winter thus far in Wisconsin, which is a big disappointment for me.

Snow Fall, a soft pastel on 6x6 Pastelbord.

1. After choosing my reference photo and using mat board corners to create a square composition, I used vine charcoal on one of my favorite surfaces to quickly sketch in the main details: a foreground tree and branches and a tree line.

2. I blocked in three higher value colors for the foreground snow-covered grasses (a blue-violet, a gray-green, and a red-violet), sketched the main tree structure in with a grayish teal and a pale pink, and drew in a tree line, initially in just a dark blue-green, and filled the sky holes in with a pale greenish blue. I added a few more details by tucking in some grasses, some color variety in the distant trees, and shadows around the tree trunk and limbs.

3. Continuing with a limited palette, I've added some more texture to the side of the tree that was hit by the horizontal snowfall and the snow-covered grasses in the foreground.

4. Adding a few more variety into the tree line in the distance, higher value near whites, and a smattering of leaves on the tree and a few on the ground brings this composition to near completion. I like that I've been able to give the impression of some bright whites while using only extremely high value color and neutral sticks. My eyes are a little tired today, so I'm glad that I was able to work relatively quickly in a well-focused creative zone.

5 (finished). After an hour break at the grocery store, I repaired the sunlight on the row of trees in the background and added variety and bigger leaves to the tree in the foreground.