Ground a la Richard McKinley

A new beginning. I haven’t tried this kind of underpainting before. I started by stretching 300 lb. Arches Cold Press paper on gatorboard with staples. Once my paper had dried, I set up on my painting easel and I sprayed it with water. I then applied very, very thin and highly watered down Golden acrylic paint. As I worked I kept lightly spraying the paper to keep it from drying out. I also sprayed to make the paint run. Sometimes I picked up a wrongly place dribble with the brush and other times I just let it run. By keeping the paper wet, the acrylic paint did not dry as fast as usual so I was able to make adjustments for quite a long time.

Once it had dried thoroughly, I applied Golden’s Fine Pumice gell with no additional pumice added to the mixture. It dried perfectly clear.

How to Paint a Sunflower in Pastels

Sunny Faces, pastel, 16″ x 20″

Thumbnail Sketch

I start with black and white thumbnail sketches in my sketchbook to work out the composition.

The composition forms the bones of any drawing or painting. It is the basic structure that all the different parts need in order to start an interesting “conversation” going among the parts of the painting. This is not the only sketch I made during this process.  I do several thumbnails, arranging and rearranging the abstract shapes made by the leaves and flowers to figure out how to make the positive shapes (the image) and negatives spaces (the background) interact well together. It is worth the time to get the composition in place at the start, rather than having to make major corrections later.

It is easier with just a sketch to pay attention in the whole design. It also lets me define the angle of the light source, and the dark-and-light values from light and shadow.  That will have to remain consistent as I paint.  I don’t shade in shadows on a line drawing, but some strong shadow lines are drawn (such as on the leaf at the lower right).

Since this composition is fairly intricate, I draw a 4×4 grid over the sketch so that I can transfer the image proportionally to the board.  Where it’s complicated, I make a finer grid.

Ground and Transferred Image

I lay down the grid on the ¼” Gatorboard® before I cover the board with the colored ground.  The grid will still be visible through the ground.  With pencil, I copy the sketch onto the Gatorboard.

Once the image is transferred, I mix up Golden’s Fine Pumice Gel medium with Golden acrylic paint. The pumice gel makes a fine gritty surface that accepts many layers of soft pastels. The surface will not fill in quickly with pastel dust, and it will be able to handle multiple corrections (either lifting up or covering over paint).

To make the surface I prefer to work on, I spoon a dollop of gel into a container. I also keep a jar of pumice dust on hand.  Some artists use marble dust, but I find it leaves much too hard a surface for my taste. As I stir the gel, I add additional pumice dust and water and mix them together until the gel becomes a smooth batter.  For the 16”x20” sunflower painting, I use about half a cup.  It should flow but not be runny.  You’ll have to experiment and find the feeling for the texture you enjoy working on.

Making sure all the lumps are dissolved and well mixed, I then add the acrylic paint and mix it in. For this painting, I choose an orange/yellow as a ground color to create complementary sparking between the ground and the sky and to harmonize with the colors of the leaves and flowers. The ground color is the same color as parts of the flower.

I apply the gel with a 3” house paint brush. This should be done in one coat. Two coats would become opaque and take on a whitish cast.

As you can see, it does not need to be even.  Just don’t leave any board exposed. After the surface is dry to the touch you can touch up any missed spots. (If you try to work over wet ground, you will pick it up.)  The transferred image can be seen through the ground.

Leftover gel can be stored in an airtight container for later use. Spray the mixture with water and tape the lid to make sure the container is truly airtight. The mixture will keep for months.

Initial Layers

Before we get started, I want to share a bit of pastelist terminology which differs from traditionally accepted definitions. When working on a thickly applied pastel painting, pastelists have come to call the stroking of chalk on a surface as painting and the chalk sticks as paint. For pastelists, a quick pastel sketch is still referred to as a drawing.

I use both medium and soft pastels, predominantly Rembrandt, Sennelier, Unison, and Great American Artworks. It is very helpful to have a wide range of colors and values of pastel sticks.

The first layers of color help to establish the values and block in the basic shapes. The vast majority of values will be made up of mid-tones. I add highlights as flecks of whitish-blue on the edges of a few leaves and blossom. I add pink into the sky, darken some shadows on leaves, and put in some mid-tones for the centers of the flowers and leaves. Highlights and shadow areas perform as exclamations points and are distributed throughout the painting.

I look to see that the paint I added has the right values to make a “line” to follow through the composition, guiding the eye around the piece in a dynamic way. If I look at the highlight at the top, my eye is drawn around the flower on the right to the dark stem.  The smaller highlights on the stems make me pause, and then the big, dominating flower pulls my eye up.  But there is tension, with the dark value of the leaf, the highlights, and the intricate shapes below drawing the eye back down. Most of the composition draws the eye to the middle.  Small highlights interspersed around the whole image add a dynamic balance.

I generally paint the first layer in the sky as a bright, cool pink. I like painting skies with pinks, purples, blues, and yellows. Skies are much more interesting and lively with the addition of other colors besides just blue. I also like to bring the sky colors into the landscape and the landscape colors into the sky. That way the colors in the sky and land begin a beautiful dialogue with one another.  To help make the warm sunflowers really pop, the sky color is the complement of the flowers.

I work all over, alternating between sky, flower, and leaf so that I maintain the complementarity and don’t “finish” something too soon. It might get out of balance for values and chroma (the colors).   After about 3 layers of paint, with pink and blue on the left, and another layer of blue on the right, it looks like this.

I like to work in thin layers to mix the paint on the surface.  Here I add more pink and blue where needed to even out the top. I begin to paint the next layer of blue in the lower right corner.

I paint with thin layers so that I can essentially mix the paint on the surface.  If I use too heavy a hand, the paint fills in the grit, and I can’t work on top of it any more.  Thin layers let me add layers for as long as I need to get the right final effect.  Additional layers of all colors help define the shapes and start to make the shapes look three dimensional.For this painting, I use the primary colors to mix the secondary colors on the painting itself. I also use secondary colors found in my pastel sets.  On the board, I lightly layer and that roughly “blends” them with their primary colors. These primary colors will also be used throughout the painting for additional color harmony. For instance, to create a green, I will mix the blues that are used in the sky with the yellows used in the sunflower to make green. I also use greens from my set, and then blend onto them the same blues and yellows to add richness to the color green.  Look at the close-up of the leaf.

Additional Layers and Defining Shapes

More layering enriches the color. I add more blue to the sky to make it less purple.  Thus I need to work the flower. I work all over and don’t concentrate too long on one particular spot.

I add more color and more definition, primarily in the center of the flowers.  This really starts to push that area back now. The leaves, too, are more defined with sharper edges. With the addition of more darks, lights, and mid-tone color values, everything is starting to look more three dimensional.

Final Image

At this point, I’m left with minor adjusting, fixing small pars of the painting.  Notice the leaf on the left becoming more defined in every way, and it now works better in the composition.  Notice the new intricacy on the lower leaf in the middle, especially by painting on a midrib. These small details come last (it wasn’t even in the sketch).