Yosemite Valley Reflections

"Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it. "  Salvador Dali 
This blog is for my Tuesday night pastel class. Hi class!
I thought it would be fun to post the step by step for our class, "How do we paint water?"
I read once that the least you do to water the better. In other words, try to get down the essence of water and then quit messing with it. I like to create a vertical stoke of color because reflections are a large part of what makes water look wet. Those shapes are a reflection of the vertical objects from above the water.
I know it's a bit complicated drawing - lots of shapes - but I'm excited about my trip to Yosemite so I just couldn't help but create an pastel from my trip. In class we may take just a part of the image and work on that.

So lets' start with drawing in the basic shapes. (Wolf Kahn doesn't like drawing in the basic shapes but that's for another lesson"

Step 1 -Draw in the basic shapes

Step 2 - Add local color

Step 3 - Block in reflected color.

Step 4 - Add more vertical strokes of color. That which is dark above will be reflected a bit lighter and the light colors will be reflected a bit darker creating reflected color which is closer in value.

Step 5 - Add lighter areas to water and horizontal strokes to depict movement