And He Ploughed Up The Ground By The Cold Lake Shore

I’ve been busy with other stuff for a couple of days but I’m back today with a soft pastel landscape. After googling around for scenes on Bodmin Moor, I found a view of Dozmary Pool, a lake swathed in legend, home of the Lady Of The Lake who gives Excalibur to King Arthur and is given it back after his death. It was quite a simple view, one where there were no buildings or crazy rock formations to compete with my colours.

I started with the sky and the lake, adding loads of layers of colour (thin at first, only applying pressure later when it was required). I found my composition was looking a bit unbalanced, so added in the big cloud on the right as a counterweight. I dragged the warm yellow much further down the page than I could see in my source photo. I smoothed out the empty shy with swirls from a whitish pastel and the water in horizontal strokes with the same pastel. I added the clouds afterwards and smoothed them out with my finger in the middle and with colour shapers around the edges.

Then I added the land on the far side of the lake and the fenceposts. I remembered to use a charcoal pencil to draw in the wires.

Finally, on to the grassy foreground. I started by choosing my colours and standing the pastels up in the box in an attempt to stay organised. I started by putting down a thin layer of colours, starting with yellow at the top and going through orange, red and purple to blue at the bottom. Then I filled out the foreground with vertical strokes, starting at the top with light colours and yellows and working my way down to blues. I included greens here and there to keep things interesting and not just paint a rainbow. The result was a bit too focused and harsh, so I went over it all with a colour shaper with vertical strikes. That was an improvement but the foreground was now looking boring, so I added another layer of grass strokes but with the grass generally (but not always) bending over to the left. I mixed the the colours around this time, rather than working from yellow to blue. That made things more interesting but I was left with a foreground that looked as if it belonged in a different painting. So I thought for a minute, then grabbed a dark purple marker (to harmonise with the purple in the sky and the lake) and added more grassy strikes all over the foreground, including some really tall grasses at the edges, overlapping the lake and sky and framing painting. That definitely improved things and I decided to stop there while I was winning.

This one feels like a winner with all those colours everywhere. There’s definitely an air of mystery to this one, which is good. Could the foreground still be described as belonging a different painting? Don’t know. Maybe. And, as a soft pastel artist, could I be described as a one trick pony? Oh yes. Anyway, this one is going up for sale, with the price to be found here. And I’m naming it after a line in Telegraph Road that might be difficult for me to tick off if I don’t paint many lakes.