I used a warmer, more saturated red under the greens in the warm mid-ground bushes and a cooler, less saturated red under the pads that will be a cool green due to receiving direct cool light from the sky.Īs I was working, I tried to remember that it’s interesting and varied shapes I wanted to create, not the actual cactus pads. Instead of painting brown and gray shades in the photo, I recommend adding some purples and blues. The completed gouache underpainting has warm and cool reds for the greens, orange for the blue distant vegetation (upper right corner), green for the red cactus flowers, and some purples in the shadow areas (some of which will stay purple as a foil to all the greens). Since the cactus and background vegetation are mostly green, the gouache underpainting was mostly red. This is the start of the loose underpainting done using Holbein gouache with a cheap synthetic brush (since no detail is needed and the rough surface destroys brushes very quickly). Some of the pads are always at various stages of growth and decline. My recommendation at this stage is to vary the shapes of the of the pad, even if they are very consistent. Though I often use a toned surface for pastel paintings, I started with white for this painting since I planned to do a complementary underpainting in gouache.Īt this point I didn’t include any of the spines in the drawing (I will do no spines before their time!). In selecting the section of photograph to use for the painting, I considered how the foreground shadows could help to lead the viewers eyes up into the tangle of cactus pads. I started with a drawing on the pastel board with light blue for the outlines of the pads and burnt sienna for the tubercles (the bumps where the spines emerge). Notice the play of light and shadow on the cactus pads. It is a large prickly pear cactus in Crystal Cove, California. Here is the photograph from which I am working. – White sanded pastel paper mounted to board 1. Mine include Blick, Rembrandt, Sennellier, NuPastel, Girault, Terry Ludwig, Great American Artworks, Art Spectrum, and Mount Vision, and Diane Townsend – A wide assortment of pastels, sorted generally by color and value. warm greens), color variation within a value, and use of a color like purple to break up some of monotony of the greens. This can be overcome with a complementary underpainting (scroll through the demo and you’ll see how I start with reds and pinks!) and careful attention to the direction of light (creating cool vs. Pastels let their color shine unobstructed, reflecting every light ray with which the pigment comes in contact.Ĭactus painting can be challenging because there is so much green to deal with! That becomes even more of an issue if there is other green vegetation in the painting. The color punch from pastels really stands out. Pastels are an outstanding medium to choose for your next cactus painting. Artist Lori White Brings the Prickly Desert “Bloom” to Life

Cactus painting