Coral Shells, pastel, 30” x 34”

Graham Painter describes the methods he has developed of painting in pastels to create luminescence and build compositions using blocks of colour.

I think of my pastels as paintings rather than coloured drawings because my painting process includes wetting the pastels and using a medium.

Support

I use 300lb (600gsm) Waterford rough surface watercolour paper clipped onto either a board or preferably a stretched canvas with four large bulldog clips. This gives a perfect support to work on, being both rigid and sensitive (because of the elasticity of the canvas), with an added bonus that it is lightweight and easy to carry.

A heavy weight paper is used to prevent as much cockling as possible, the bulldog clips ensure the paper dries back flat overnight.

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Medium

My medium is made from a mixture of a matt acrylic emulsion and a matting agent; the latter is used to prevent any sheen appearing on the painting surface, and the ingredients are mixed two thirds emulsion and one third matting agent.

The medium allows the pastel to be applied in different ways; scraping pastel from the side of the stick on to a palette and then mixing the medium into it creates a paint which can then be knifed or brushed onto the paper surface; alternatively the medium can be worked onto pastel applied direct to the paper. The medium itself is a white milky colour, but dries completely transparent; it is therefore possible by use of varying amounts of pastel pigment to create semi-opaque glazes which I find very exciting.

Watercolour wash techniques

I started the first large painting Coral Shells, above, on untinted paper and glued on gold leaf in areas with my medium. I had hoped that dragging pastel over the gold would create an iridescent effect, but so little gold leaf shows in the finished painting that it has no relevance to the sparkle I observed from the corals.

Having applied some pastel to paper I then work across the paper surface with brush and some water, creating washes of pastel. The washes mix and bleed, creating accidents of colour harmonies which I can remove straight away if I am not happy with them. At this stage I apply pastel lightly as this will greatly reduce the problem of excess pastel on the paper surface and so stop it becoming claggy with pastel when wet.

The pigments in pastel are exactly the same as in watercolours or oils and some are staining and transparent as well, so wetting the pigment on the paper surface creates staining or watercolour washes on the paper.

Some pastels are more suitable to this technique than others, and I have found Unison to be the best. However, I also use some Rembrandt, Sennelier, Schminke and Art Spectrum ranges in order to exploit their different colours and properties.

Composition

I created the composition of the painting with colour and built it up with subsequent layers of pastel. In this way areas of the painting could be altered if necessary. The blue and yellow saucer corals were fairly easy to incorporate in the composition, but the shell corals were more complex; they had to have a light and delicate appearance but were also required to sit on their own spatial plane in the painting.

The dark passages in the work in fact used quite strong colours, and in areas of reflected light I used grey muted versions of the high key colours to produce subdued colour.

I found there was a tendency to make the long finger corals too descriptive, which altered the focal balance of the painting. Simplifying them proved to be the answer. Balance between corals and fish was a paramount factor. Definition was not relevant, but colours and shapes were of major importance. The paintings are not about fish, but I used them for their bright colour.

My favourite fish, the flame fish, appear in all three large paintings: with colours of crimson, scarlet, orange, yellow plus an ice green (viridian tint O) blue, all in one fish, they are really special

Coral contrasts

Light, pastel, 30” x 34”

The second painting Light, above, has more diverse types of coral. I loved the contrast between the petal shaped corals on the right of the picture and the delicate stick corals on the left. The effect of the tiny corals in the foreground is for me reminiscent of musical notes.

An important area of this painting is the large section of blue, about a third of the area, covering both sides of the blue spectrum from a warm blue violet to a cool blue green. The warm areas were built using ultramarine, permanent rose and magentas. The contrast was created by applying a cold turquoise and a Schminke bluish green over them.

I used the floodlit corals on the right of the painting to balance the dark blue area of the water on the left where the vertical coral has a pearlised appearance. To capture this effect I used soft close-toned colours that echo hues found in the corals on the right of the picture, creating a harmony in the painting.

The yellow fish when first painted into the section of blue created a beacon in the middle of the work that needed to be subdued to allow the eye to travel round the painting. To bring the bottom section of this painting forward, I used heavy impasto pastel on the stick corals.

The process was made easier by using home-made pastels which are so soft it is like painting on silk. Made with pigment qualities much greater than their commercial counterparts, home-made pastels have a greater coverage or saturation capability (light over dark). In the commercially available pastels, Sennelier white (No. 525) has the best saturation but will crumble when pressed heavily onto the paper.

Broken colour

Jewel, pastel, 30” x 34”

The third painting in the Flame Fish trilogy is Jewel, above, suggested by the shape of the large coral in the bottom area of the work which reminded me of a pearl in a shell.

Working on the 300lb (600gsm) watercolour paper the initial blocking in became quite extensive. Laying the painting flat, I scraped pastel pigment onto the paper surface. I then dripped water into the areas of pastel and moved the resulting pools of pastel water around with large flat brushes. This created random washes and while they were still wet, I worked into these washes with medium. I applied it carefully with a painting knife, to create semi-opaque glazes and by using more localised colours in the blue green spectrum, I was able to build luminosity in the top section of the painting. Working in this manner, a lovely crusty surface can be achieved and by dragging dry pastel over this, one is able to build areas of broken colour.

The dark areas of colour created in the early stages of the painting are mostly wet pastel washes which became modified as a result of extensive reworking of sections of the picture.

To avoid becoming too graphic in approach, I painted through the problem areas with a brush full of water, allowed it to dry and then carried on rebuilding with pastel. The shell, weed and coral on the left side of the work were all repainted and only satisfied me when a filigree appearance was achieved. The fish were painted in last with delicate strokes of pastel, creating a partial saturation of colour, to allow for a translucent or glaze effect.

Although these paintings are full of high-key colour, through control and balance, I feel they are vibrant and not vulgar. The construction of form has been made from colour and this has created colour plays and harmonies which enhance both the image and response to feelings of subject matter.

About Graham Painter, 1047 - 2007

Graham was brought up in East Ham, London, and moved to Hutton, Essex. He completed a Foundation Course at Braintree College, Essex, followed by a three year course at Sheffield City Polytechnic where he attained a BA Honours Degree in Fine Art Painting.

Graham painted in watercolour, oil and pastel with equal skill and was influenced by the work of Turner, Joan Eardley and Kurt Jackson.

He was a much respected teacher and, as so many painters, divided his time between teaching and painting.

Graham’s work can be found in many private homes and corporate premises.

This article was taken from the June 1999 issue of The Artist