Two Steps Forward or Is It Two Steps Back

February 10: Has it been three days since I was in the studio? Nan and I had discussed yesterday adding extra trees to hide the messy, too-many-layers, mountainside. I began adding a couple extra trees, then took the small paintbrush, dabbed it on white pastel and dotted the mountains. This worked somewhat.

"Snowy Ridge Trail," 9 1/2 x 15 3/4, pastel painting

Original photo courtesy: Corey Sheehan

I also added some white where the sky meets the mountain tops. I still need to smooth out. I used white to work the mist more and put between tree limbs. Sitting close, I got so frustrated. I used white charcoal to add some brush at the foot of trees on the left and worked at better defining the ridge (after rubbing it smooth again.) 

I can’t help but be discouraged, and yet, once again, the progress photo doesn’t look that bad. Yeah, there are mistakes. One of the main ones is getting the green into the mist. Also, I made the pine needles too thick using pastel without good points. How could I have used pastel pencil over the layers? The branches and needles need those thinner lines.

Is there a way to scrape off the layers where I need to put sharp, thin lines? Then use a colored pastel pencil to draw in the branches and needles? The area scraped off needs to be thin to leave the background clean, then I’d need to put in the pencil work right where I scraped off the thick pastel layers.

Ideas to work with next time.