Fortunately, we had a bright sunny day with very little wind which was ideal for using powdered charcoal as a background for our paintings and having to work outside on them.
Sharon brought corn stalks, some still with ears of corn attached for us to use for doing a basic outline on the paper.
Corn Stalks 1
The areas we wanted to leave without charcoal were coated with water, then we took our paintings outside and dusted the paper with powdered charcoal.
We then literally threw containers of water over the paper to remove the excess charcoal. The paintings were left outside to dry.
Each of us made three attempts to create interesting backgrounds for our corn stalk paintings.
Corn Stalks 2
By the time we had the third background doused with water and set to dry in the sun, our first attempt was dry and ready for us to proceed with the next step.
Before bringing the painting into the building it was sprayed with workable fixative, to prevent the charcoal from spreading any further while still allowing us to paint on the paper.
Raw sienna was used as the first layer of paint to indicate where some of the leaves and stalks will be.
Corn Stalks
A mixture of burnt and raw sienna was applied to other areas of the leaves and stalks. A hint of French ultramarine blue was added to the mixture and painted into some of the areas to give the impression of the partially dried leaves.
A lot more detail still has to be added to the paintings before they are complete. I will post them as I do more work on them.
Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and look at the artwork.
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