Areas Of Study In Photography

The lady artist is not just a working artist but also the gallery director of a local art center. The artist is a resident of the Hempfield Township who discovered her talents in high school, honed them by majoring in art from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania and has been active in the local art club since 1970. The art center regularly exhibits her work. According to her, she works in oils, pastels and silk screen printing.

Member from a different art club invited her recently to demonstrate landscape pastel painting from a photograph. Working exclusively from photographs is not recommended by her for beginners. She recommends that those who are starting out should get out in the open to see the nuances of light and shadow.

According to her, when someone works outside, they can absorb the details, sketch the actual scene, and take photographs which can be referred to later on. And this is what she normally does. She is able to create composite landscapes using several photographs. This technique becomes very useful when the customer asks for elements that aren't present in just one photograph.

When a photograph is used as a reference for a painting, one can adjust the painting if he does not like something in the reference photograph. It is up to you to decide the most important part of your painting. She wouldn't normally do this but using a photograph makes it easy to figure out how a picture would look when it is completed.

She paints a pastel portrait while explaining her technique from an enlarged photocopy of a photo that was clicked during the fall at Slippery Rock. She does not draw edge to edge so that the frame does not cover any part of the painting. She achieves layering in colors by painting on the wrong side of the pastel sheet since that is less textured.

To evoke dark logs and branches rising from water, she uses blues and reds. Special sections of her painting that need emphasis are clarified by adding bits of red not visible on the photograph. The characteristic of pastels being close to using pure pigment is exploited by her carefully.

The color values should be stopped and pondered over as a recommendation by her. You would not want to use way too much light that soon. Unlike watercolors, when painting with pastels, one does not need to worry about conserving the white areas and can layer the lighter values over the darker one. You just have to feel your way with pastels.

The color range should be used carefully as per her. Without mixing a lot of shades we can still get the right color because of the wide range of color that is available today. One of the advantages of painting with pastels over other media is that you can merely brush or wipe the color off and start over if you aren't satisfied with the result. This medium is easy to work with.

When she was invited by another art club, she demonstrated landscape pastel painting from a photograph. According to her, beginners should not work exclusively from photographs. She says that it is best for starters to go out and see the nuances of light and shadow.

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