Michael Chesley Johnson - Red Rock Crossing Rush

"Red Rock Crossing Rush"
5x7 pastel en plein air

I'm teaching a workshop this week, and yesterday, I painted four small pastels.  By the time I got to this one, which is the fourth and last, I was pretty tired.  The left, verbal side of the brain had switched off, and I was painting purely from the right side.    My color choices were automatic, going straight from the eye to the hand, bypassing that part of me that consciously articulates and narrates.  This painting, as they say, painted itself.   I like the movement and dynamics of it.  I wish I could paint like this all the time. 

Pastel, by the way, is wonderfully suited to this kind of "automatic" painting.  The color choices and the value choices are all right there in your box -  no mixing required, no brushes to clean between strokes.  When I want to go out and paint simply, I choose pastel over oil.

If you haven't heard, I'm teaching two pastel workshops for the Sedona Art Center this winter. On Saturday, January 31, I'm teaching a one-day studio workshop for beginners. I'll show you two of the methods I use to paint in pastel, and we'll have lots of time to work with different materials and techniques. Then the week of March 23-27, I'm teaching a five-day outdoor workshop for all levels. I'll show you how best to use pastel in an outdoor settin, and we'll have fun exploring some of my favorite painting spots. I hope you'll join me for one (or both!) of these workshops.  

Michael Chesley Johnson
www.MichaelChesleyJohnson.com

Michael Chesley Johnson - Bernard Pier

I recently taught a workshop in Acadia National Park in Maine. One day, we went out to Bernard, a quaint fishing village on Mount Desert Island. The light was overall cool, which made for some very warm shadows. You don't often see this in nature on a sunny day. I "pushed" the warmth in the shadows a bit to include some lovely oranges and reds.



"Bernard Pier"
9x12, pastel
$100+$5 shipping

Michael Chesley Johnson - Pastel Nocturne

Although I've painted nocturnes in oil, I've never done a night painting in pastel. I thought I'd give it a try. Unlike oil painting at night, you don't have the color mixing issue. (In the glow of my headlamp, Ultramarine Blue oil paint looks a lot like Alizarin Crimson oil paint, and it's mostly because I always arrange my palette in the same way that I can tell them apart.) But you do have the color selection issue -- which is, in my mind, almost as difficult.

We had a beautiful full moon this morning, and when I woke around 4, I decided to take advantage of it. I loaded up my pastel gear and hiked down to our beach through the apple trees. The ripe apples seem even more fragrant in the night. As I moved out into a clearing, I saw Friar's Head, lying in the distance like a black slab in a silvery sea.

I set up my pastel box. I keep it well-organized. It has six sections, one for each color family. I divide each section with cool colors at one end and warm colors at the other. In addition, I sort the pastels in each section by value. With this level of organization, you'd think it'd be a piece of cake in the dark to find the correct cool, dark purple I need. Not so - there are subtle but important variations among those cool, dark purples. They were almost impossible to see under my headlamp.

I found myself looking at the scene, deciding (or guessing) what color a certain shape before me was, and then reaching into the box where I remembered that particular color should be. But was it the correct cool, dark purple? The best I could do was get right the color family, the temperature and the value. Whether it was a slightly redder purple or a slightly bluer one was hard to tell. But this isn't a problem unique to pastel; it's the same with mixing oil paint in the dark.

Unlike oil paint, however, which stays on the palette where you put it, pastel sticks don't. I have a little tray (my "working palette") that I put my pastel sticks in as I work so I can find them again easily. Well, they rolled around and got jumbled up a bit. Oops! Is this the purple or the green? I had to work very hard at keeping the pastel sticks that were in use separate.

I ended up focussing more on value than anything and tried to approximate the temperatures. Even so, I was pretty satisfied with the result. Here's the painting after a few minor tweaks in the studio:



"Friar's Head, Moonlight"
5x7, pastel, en plein air
$60+$5 shipping

www.MichaelChesleyJohnson.com

Betsey Nelson - Head Study I

Head Study 12x10 oil $360

This another study done using spots of color instead of paintings things (in this case features).

This creates a much more painterly piece and much more interesting painting at least to this artist.