"Laughing Gas ©," an original I painted a couple years ago with pastel, about 15" x 22" unframed, rendered on a sheet of Canson Mi-Teintes rag paper, Steel Gray, using a mix of soft pastel brands, mostly Rembrandt, and NuPastel hard pastel. Some detail work rendered with CarbOthello pastel pencil. Much of my work is sourced from black-and-white photographs I shot in my hometown in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania for a college art class about 50 years ago. All the colors are, of course, imagined.
Posted in New York City Art Scene
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Shooting from fifty-year-old black-and-white frames and building all the color from scratch, that's a patient kind of seeing. Pennsylvania light has a specific quality at certain hours, even in memory. What made you land on steel gray as the base?
Steel Gray is a good mid-tone for a project that needs a wide range of color
That's smart, keeping the mid-tone as an anchor so nothing fights for attention. Did you find yourself pulling toward cooler or warmer secondaries once gray was locked in, or did the original frames guide that choice?
Mr. Corwin, the original photograph is a black-and-white shot I made 50 years ago. I have no idea what the original colors were, although I did use color reference for the gas pumps. Other than that, all the colors in this piece are imagined. The gray background is irrelevant. It's just a great starting point, and it helps unify the overall composition.