Step By Step Demonstrations

Pastel Demonstration: 'Evening Reflections, Piazza San Marco, Venice'

This painting is of the Piazza San Marco on a wet evening in October. The inspiration came from the dazzling reflections on the wet piazza

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Painted on black ‘Glass paper’ “Hermes” mounted on board. All pastels were “Unison”.

Step One

A Brown Earth pastel was applied thinly and blended to provide a warm ground to work on.

Rough blocking in was then started using Yellow2 Yellow15 and Brown Earth 8.

Step Two

More of the painting surface was covered, overlaying several more Yellow and Brown Earth tones. A little blending with my finger was undertaken in the reflections, in an attempt to under paint the wet piazza in preparation for more resolved reflections to follow later.

Step three

At this stage I decided to begin ‘tightening’ the drawing slightly, once again using all the previously mentioned colours, but also adding Blue Green 15, 5 and Brown Earth 22, 23 to add variety to the painting. The reflections were developed, overlaying vertical ‘zig zag’ marks. I added Brown Earth 19 for the highlights on the Basillica, and Red Earth 5 for the darks in doorways and recesses.

Step Four

In this final stage, no further colours were added, but the figure and further details were introduced. Extreme care was taken not to add too much detail, or to get over tight, as I wanted to keep this painting as ‘loose’ as possible.

The finished painting

Evening Reflections, Piazza San Marco, Venice

Pastel on black glasspaper

6.5" x 7" (16.5cm x 17.7cm)

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