The light Goes On!

Painting with pastels has become a passion, a huge enjoyment and also greatly satisfying to me. I have been going to the home of one of our terrific local Auburn pastel artist's, Reif Erickson on most Thursdays since November of last year. Reif always has a challenge for us, and he shows us his technique in his paintings as we watch him produce a 9X13" painting in about 30 minutes.  He talks as he paints to underscore things that he wants us to learn about painting with pastels. Once he is done, he takes a copy of the picture he used as his model, and hands it to each of us and says, now its your turn.

We go back to our easels or pastel boards shaking our heads.  We have been amazed at how quickly Reif can produce a finished painting, that is more attractive than the photo he used as the idea for the painting. His paintings don't duplicate the photo, he crops them or realigns the photo so that it is more interesting or more in scale, or some unsightly item is eliminated in his finished product.  Yes, he has an artist's eye.  He successfully does this treatment with his paintings because he has a highly developed sense of color, and seems to be able to see all of the underlying colors in  a scene that don't appear to the average novice. Each week, he has pointed out colors that are not dominant in a photo, that he accentuates in his painting to give it warmth and color. Those nuances that separate the finished product from okay to pleasing to the eye.

I have been painting with pastels now for almost three months and have completed about 19 paintings since I started.  Half of those are subjects I have chosen outside his studio setting, just to challenege myself and get a feel for the medium and what I can do with it.  I have chosen some subjects with a great deal of color challenges so that I could beging to blend and highlight them for effect. I know I haven't learned everything there is to know by a long shot, but today was a breakthrough for me. I watched Reif take a very flat looking unintersting rather dark photo taken in late afternoon of mountains and a river near Clear Lake and turn it into a beautiful colorful vista. He never dithered over color choices once while executing his painting.  I remarked when he finished that it was far better than the photo, and much more interesting. He said yes, today is about creativity, and what you can do with this drab photo. Today's excercise is to stimulate the imagination.

Reif's words really hit me at that point, because I finally realized that as an artist he could turn the mundane into something beautiful, the lifeless photo into something that was alive and immediately drew your eye to its color.  That is what any really good artist can do. Take your eye away from the imperfections and show you the beauty. I thought to myself, if I applied myself with that thought, I could do the same thing! So instead of looking at what Reif had done and the colors he chose, I examined the drab photo and decided to highlight the colors I saw that would bring this picture alive.  I thought, I would even add some that weren't there just to give it punch. That was really a defining moment for me, because it released any inhibition I may have had, and made me want to use as much color as I could to charge my picture with interest and life.  I was experimenting, blending, shading, overlaying and infusing color into my painting like I knew what I wanted and what I was doing. Reif watched me from across the table or over my shoulder a few times but never said anything.  He walked around the room as he always does, giving people suggestions, complimenting their progress and showing some of the newer students how to get a particular affect or color.

As my painting began to come together, and my colors and formations were dappled with different colors I could tell that he knew I had made a departure from what he had done.  He watched as I leaned back to look at it and said, "that is really coming together nicely Paul." I smiled and thanked him, and said I am having fun just using a lot of color. "So, I can see, he said, and it looks good." After all the weeks of instruction, I think the light when on today, I am beginning to feel the colors!  I am realizing the subtleties that make a difference to the eye.