Painting a waterfall in pastel

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Scwd Isaf Clyn Gwyn

Scwy Isaf Clyn Gwyn, Pastel by Jenny Keal

If you have tried painting water in watercolour you will know how difficult it is to work negatively around the white paper to create the highlights or how tricky it is to lay the wet in wet reflections at just the right time.

Painting water in pastel is much simpler because you can lay the light over the dark. This means you can create far more intricate and subtle effects in the falling water and reflections can be created by softening the pastel in a vertical direction with your fingers.

This painting is of Scwd Isaf Clyn Gwyn, just south of the Brecon Beacons in ‘waterfall country’ around Ystradfelte. It is a spectular series of falls in a Tolkeinesque gorge. The painting was built up in stages, keeping the background fall soft and misty to convey a sense of distance. The warmer colours, stronger tones and sharper detail in the foreground emphasise this effect.

You can see this painting, along with many others at The Wyeside Art Centre in Builth Wells. as David and I have an exhibition on there for the rest of the summer. Contact them for opening times

Please use the comments box if you have any specific questions about how the painting was created.

My first blog

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Barafundle Bay

Barafundle Bay, pastel by Jenny Keal

Blogging seems to be the new way to communicate and it offers many possibilities. I will be using this blog to offer hints and tips on painting and announcing news of events that David and myself are organising. Maybe the odd profound thought might creep in as well.

Visual Art tries to communicate without words and I hope the image above says something to you. This is Barafundle Bay in Pembrokeshire. I sketched this scene on a stormy February day and painted it in pastel later in my studio. I can still feel the salt on my skin when I look at it. I hope it says something to you.

Pastel is a superb medium for conveying atmosphere, and this allows you to put more emotion into your paintings. This painting is from my new book ‘Painting with Pastels’
Communication has changed so much in my lifetime and this new way of reaching people, including complete strangers, still seems like science fiction to me. However, it doesn’t really matter if you use two tin cans with string between them or zeros and ones clicking down a telephone line, the important thing is the interaction. Please leave your comments – I want to hear them.

Dirt, dust and watercolour: paintings of coal mines

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I have always been fascinated by industrial subjects and they make an excellent change from landscapes, especially if you feel yourself getting into a rut. Many years ago I wrote a book Images of the South Wales Mines, and did quite a lot of work in and around the mines at the time when they were being closed down as the government of the day wrought its vengeance on the mining industry. Now all deep mining has ended in Wales and I have been working on a few more paintings of this vanished era.

The painting is a watercolour and charcoal work of Marine Colliery, Cwm, showing a coal train getting up steam. When it comes to painting industrial subjects I am a great fan of dirt, dust and steam, as it not only can create instant atmosphere, but can hide the bits you don’t want people to see. This is especially useful where you are painting a scene that no longer exists, and are not sure about what exactly went where! While this was not true of the painting depicted, I have used the ploy in other situations, so if you are painting such scenes do make full use of the dirt and dust.

This is one of a collection of paintings that will be on display at the Corner House Gallery at 38 Quay Street, Ammanford in Carmarthenshire. Tel. 01269 594959  They will be exhibited from the afternoon of Thursday 4th August onwards, and I shall be there on that afternoon, so do come along and have a chat. To see some of the paintings in the collection click here.

Painting Greens in the Summer Landscape

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Summer is a lovely time of the year to be out sketching and painting in the countryside and it is hard to beat sitting beside a babbling brook with your picnic and at the same time painting the water sparkling and dancing in the sunlight. However, when confronted with so much greenery in a profusion of varied greens many artists find it quite overwhelming.

This small watercolour of a Derbyshire hay meadow is featured in my article on painting summer landscapes in the current issue (August) of Leisure Painter magazine which covers the three different approaches to tackling greens as well as mixing your greens. Often, though, not everything we see as being green is actually that colour. Grass-heads are often a different colour to their stems and you see the effect of a mass of warm-coloured grass-tops in the painting above in the horizontal band just below the cottage. In the tree shadow areas and much of the foreground detail the darks have been created with a mixture of French ultramarine plus either burnt umber or raw umber, not green.

Try not to have too many different greens in your composition: if you attempt to emulate every green you see before you the painting will become too disparate and messy. Bring more blues and greys into the more distant green areas, as this will not only relieve the overwhelming sight of so much green, but will also suggest a greater sense of distance and space.

There is much more on the subject in the article, and you will also find further advice on the subject in my DVD Painting Summer Landscapes, produced by APV Films, and available from my website

For something completely different see the Forthcoming Events page on this blog for my landscape paintings at the Welsh National Eisteddfod, and mining paintings at Corner House Gallery. Painting coal mines is the perfect antidote to those summer greens, of course!

Jenny Keal Landscape painting demonstration

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For those who love to paint landscapes and are keen to improve their work, they can do no better than to pop round to Erwood Station Craft Centre on Saturday afternoon (24th July) to see a demonstration by Jenny. She is one of the finest tutors on landscape painting around, and does an excellent demonstration. Unlike many demonstrators she paints a different subject every time and is eager to help students with their work.

While Jenny works mainly in pastel, a great deal of her advice applies to all mediums, so even if you work in watercolours, oils or acrylics, do come along and see her in action. She is also keen to help those artists who enjoy working in pastel, but find the pastel dust a problem – she has excellent techniques for coping with this, and is happy to answer your questions.

She will be at the centre from mid-day onwards and will be signing her new book. Her demonstration will begin at 2 pm, and you will be able to see her superb exhibition at the same time. Erwood Craft Centre is a lovely place to visit, not just for the paintings and crafts, but they do excellent teas and there is a lovely riverside walk along the Wye. Their telephone number is 01982 560674