Loons & Moons

by Janet Tifft | Mar 14, 2014 | Lessons

“Is this an abstract?”

Summer Sky

by Janet Tifft | Feb 19, 2014 | Lessons

Summer Sky in Pastel on Illustration Board

The subject matter of this painting is the sky. The long narrow format emphasizes the sky. The foreground is kept in the bottom fourth of the painting.

Standard procedure for pastel paintings is to start on a mid-value background, put in your darkest darks, then your lightest lights which gives all three values.

This painting was done on an illustration board called Midnight Blue which provides the darkest darks of the painting, and sets a dramatic mood.

Compositionally speaking, the long narrow format and the Midnight Blue background do most of the “work.” The clouds themselves and the foreground flora set the “place.” The diagonal of the clouds takes one’s eye from the upper left toward the horizon, which then picks up the foreground. Notice on the horizon line is the very lightest light of the painting silhouetting the mountains and giving depth. The tallest saguaro on the left leads the eye back up to the sky, creating a circular motion that allows the viewer to take in the whole painting.

Doing clouds in any medium can be fun because they can take any number of shapes, forms, or directions and still look legitimate.

Painting Depiciting Desert Backlight

by Janet Tifft | Jan 10, 2014 | Lessons

Depicting Desert Landscape Backlight Tucson AZ Watercolor Fine Arts

Depicting desert backlight

This is a transparent watercolor painting on cold press wc paper. The color scheme is warm. Notice the sky is yellow not blue because the sun is low down and filling the horizon. The veriticals of the saguaro are dark silhouettes against a bright yellow sky with a golden glow along the edges. The mountains of the background are light blue because the atmosphere washes out the intensity of the color.

To begin, an underpainting is done, bright colors wet-in-wet (with no hard edges) which is allowed to dry. Then gradually one layers the images of the mountains, bushes, foreground elements (wash on dry), then finally the dark vertical shillouettes crossing the skyline.

In terms of composition, the format is a long-narrow horizontal to give a panoramic effect. The distant mountains stop the action at the horizon line. The midground and foreground are filled with desert palo verde, mesquite, and low grasses. The saguaros become the center of interest with the large ones in foreground and smaller ones receding into the distance.