Colleen's Landscape Journey

My landscape journey began on Carroll Road. When I first arrived, I was overwhelmed with the amount of possibilities of different areas to choose for my landscape. After walking up and down the road, I decided on the area of trees that I enjoyed because of the way that they came together. Once I set up all my supplies, I began working with hard pastels. Prior to this class, I had minimal experience with pastels and no experience with painting outside. As I attempted to work with my piece I became increasingly frustrated because the drawing was not turning out how I wanted it too. So later that night, I experimented with watercolors and the next night with oil pastels, however, I was still not where I wanted to be.

When we arrived at the lighthouse, it was so peaceful and serene I knew I wanted to capture that moment and so I decided I would try and work with pastels again. I finally was starting to understand how to layer the colors of the hard pastels to achieve the feeling and look that I wanted. That afternoon, I wanted to achieve the colors of the afternoon.

The next day, we went to the Chateau Chantal, were I was a little nervous about having so much green to try and capture the differences. Although, building off of what I learned the previous day it seemed to go pretty well, so I decided to try and focus of learning how to create different lines and textures with the pastels. I think it was overall successful.

Finally, for my last outing I got to choose the location. I have always loved the look of Elk Rapids and the river where the tree stumps poke out of the water. To me, the last two pieces I created are the culmination of everything that I have discovered about hard pastels and drawing outside.