Special Subjects: Get Started Painting

PASTEL LESSON 2

Winter Landscape with Marla Baggetta

Winter landscapes are beautiful painting subjects, and pastel is perfect for capturing the soft, powdery quality of snow and its pastel hues! At first glance, snow appears white, but if you look more closely, you’ll see that, like all white objects, snow reflects the colors of the other objects around it—especially the sky. So depending on the time of day, it may appear to be blue, green, pink, or even purple, with pure white only in the brightest highlights. For this winter scene, the artist painted the snow with a variety of blues and grays to help convey the peaceful mood, which is enhanced by the use of pastels. But she also included some of the brighter hues she used to paint the sky, ...