Bob Palmerton

Landscapes in Pastel

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit - Ralph Waldo Emerson

StudioSense: "Snow Blue and the Seven Dwarfs?"

Feb 19, 2018
2 min

StudioSense: "Snow Blue and the Seven Dwarfs?"

Last year I published this blog addressing how snow can exude a variety of colors, mostly of blues, purples and cool pinks. As I continued painting "Cross Country Craving" below, the brightness from the clear sky surfaced true white in the ski tracks. Here's the latest version of this work-in-progress: So I guess the message is "don't forget about the white." I must admit that every snowball I crafted as a child was white. It didn't occur to me back then that carrying tha

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StudioSense - The Balancing Act

Feb 3, 2018
2 min

StudioSense - The Balancing Act

Compositions can be enhanced through a variety of techniques. I like to think abut composition from two perspectives: first, the placement of objects (trees, barns, rocks, people) in the painting, and, secondly, the balance (or more appropriately the imbalance) of value masses. Here's an example. The image below is "Cross Country Craving" in its earlier stages. Note the "sameness" in the snowscape on both sides of the ski tracks, especially the horizontal rows of brush and

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StudioSense

Jan 19, 2018
3 min

StudioSense

Working in the studio each day, I come across adjustments to work-in-progress paintings that I like to share with my pastel enthusiast audience. Hence this inaugural edition of "StudioSense." Here is the current version of "Wind Chill." Followers of this blog have seen this painting before; it is a large 21x27 piece on Uart sanded paper, with a lot going on! What initially caught my attention to this scene on Lake Huron was the sky. It was quite ominous in the reference p

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Painting Technique: Capturing the Glow of Winter

Jan 15, 2018
2 min

Painting Technique: Capturing the Glow of Winter

Rolling Hills County Park in Ypsilanti, Michigan maintains 3 miles of groomed cross-country skiing trails. I've enjoyed skiing and gaining inspiration for paintings in this peaceful winter setting. Last weekend I skied at Rolling Hills and captured this photo. I must have appeared rather goofy skiing along with a 35mm Canon Digital SLR camera hanging from my neck. Here is the reference photo. Note how the brights of the snow are washed out (I did not have an opportunity to

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Pastel Technique: Adding a "Misty" look to the Landscape

Jan 4, 2018
2 min

Pastel Technique: Adding a "Misty" look to the Landscape

Creating distance in a landscape is often achieved by muting the color as you near the horizon. You can also create a misty look to convey the impact of rain or (in the case of the painting below), snow. Here is the current version of "Wind Chill," inspired by a scene on Lake Huron in the upper peninsula of Michigan, near DeTour Village. We will focus on the right portion of the treeline, where you see the hazy impact of a falling snow. To create the misty look of light sno

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New Painting: Cross-Country Skiing in June

Jul 8, 2017
1 min

New Painting: Cross-Country Skiing in June

The final version of Ski Tracks. Additional work on the shadows and scattered leaves in the snow capped off an enjoyable journey from underpainting to finishing touches! Now on to my summer's art! Due to the woeful lack of cross-country skiing opportunities this past winter in Southeast Michigan, I decided to compensate for my loss by spending quality painting time building details in my large format painting inspired by my sole cross-country adventure this winter at Rollin

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Pastel Technique - Watercolor Underpainting

May 20, 2017
2 min

Pastel Technique - Watercolor Underpainting

Here's the latest version of "Ski Tracks." The composition is established to invite the viewer to follow the tracks toward the horizon. It needed an object in the foreground on the left side to help balance out the design: to do that, I created the leftmost track that heads off to the lower left corner of the painting. The yellow glow of the underpainting can be seen in the snow; much of that will remain, maintaining the "glow" theme of the painting. Original Post: While cros

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Pastel Technique - Watercolor Underpainting

May 15, 2017
2 min

Pastel Technique - Watercolor Underpainting

Here's the latest version of "Ski Tracks." The composition is established to invite the viewer to follow the tracks toward the horizon. It needed an object in the foreground on the left side to help balance out the design: to do that, I created the leftmost track that heads off to the lower left corner of the painting. The yellow glow of the underpainting can be seen in the snow; much of that will remain, maintaining the "glow" theme of the painting. Original Post: While cros

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Pastel Painting: Icy Blues