It is how you get bright pastel colors. David Napp fills his pastel art with bright colors and bold markings. He skillfully captures his adventures in the real world, from the bazaars of Marrakech and the crowded cities of India to the Italian countryside and the cosmopolitan grandeur of London. Whether it’s London’s Waterloo Bridge at night or a snow-capped Italian mountain town, Napp makes it easy to be in a specific place at a specific time. His views and motifs are carefully selected and simplified to achieve convincing clarity. Details are eliminated, shapes are massive, and the color is created for transformative loveliness.
On the way to a new pastel path
Napp worked straight out of life for the first 30 years of his career, traveling with his easel and colored pencils in tow. Then, during a trip to Marrakech in 2010, he found it too difficult to paint his subjects from life. The bazaars or souks are designed with very narrow streets so that people are forced to look at the goods at the stands. And now and then, a truck drives away garbage or a taxi drives past. There was no place to work. And then there were lighting effects – rays of the sun breaking into shadows – that were ephemeral. I chose photography. And of course, it wasn’t easy because the locals don’t do it like being photographed.
However, Napp found that photography allowed him to paint motifs under lighting conditions that he would otherwise never have been able to experience. I had never painted a cute girl drawing at night because you don’t see any colors at night. Back in the studio, he found that he could adjust the values in his digital photos to make all possible nighttime conditions accessible. While he knows that photography captures subjects that would otherwise not be in his league, Napp understands the pitfalls of relying too much on a camera. A photo is just a starting point for me. I am ready to make all kinds of changes. If you look at my reference photos, you will find that they are very different from the final work. I don’t think I could have done any of these jobs if I hadn’t had all those years of work right from the waist under my belt.
Overcome the limits of pastel color
The choice of colors by Napp comes up against the extreme limits of naturalism. In Grand Designs, an adobe wall in Morocco turns a bright, rich orange, on which palm trees cast bright red shadows. The sky behind the huge Battersea Power Station in London turns deep green in Tower Station and is covered with bright red lines. The tension of these scenes is accompanied by the thrill of Napp’s pastel strokes, which he applies prison-free. A sense of movement takes over, helps your gaze to wander around the picture, and conveys a feeling of joy and vitality. I stormed the paper. Despite all the energy, his work is supported by a skillful drawing ability and a sophisticated feel for design and composition.
Napp uses a cardboard square or shapes his fingers into a box to make the composition process easier to frame the motif. If he’s making preliminary sketches, he can grill them to ensure the composition is accurately rendered. The compositional order alone allows the freedom of attack, which is so tempting for the viewer.
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Fast work
When building a pastel-colored surface. You have to create pastel-like oil paints, starting with the shadows and ending with the lights. Also, like with oil, you have to work from thinner layers to thicker layers on top. After Napp has determined the contours of his composition, he relies on a large set of Rembrandt colored pencils to create active layers of color without adding too much pastel to bring the surface. The darks are put together and base color areas set. I often paint the first layers of pastel, apply blood oranges to areas that will later turn green, or place green in areas that will turn red. For the final layers, I use soft pastel, usually Sennelier or Schmincke. The shades of these brands are much livelier, but much of the coloring has already been taken over by the harder pastel layers underneath.
Like many pastelists, Napp struggles with the consequences of going back and reworking a pastel. Ultimately, my most successful pieces are the ones that come about the fastest when everything comes together quickly and there is no rework. After completing a piece, Napp has one final ritual. “Since I never fix anything, I have to pat the work hard enough to make sure all the loose crayons fall off. Otherwise, it will drive my poor framer crazy. If Napp’s approach to pastel colors is intriguing to you, read on for a quick step-by-step demonstration!
Steps for colored pencils
A strong undertone of often distorted colored pastels serves as the basis for many of Napp’s paintings. It is how she gets bright pastel colors.
Image transfer
Napp first used a grid to transfer the image from a sketch onto a pastel-colored sheet of paper. The pencil grid is easily visible here. The outline is carefully drawn in pencil. The darks are stacked with a deep blue. Pink in the sky creates a noticeable color effect when blue is placed on it.
Apply safe pastel strokes
The large masses of the motif are arranged with clear and self-confident brushstrokes in pastel. Blue now stands above pink in the sky, while trees are set in improbably bright orange in preparation for the next coat of paint.
Set levels of detail
Green tones are superimposed on the orange of the trees to create vibrant and vivid colors. Heaven continued to be built. And some of the complexity of the bridge’s lights and shadows is brought into play. Napp includes a full rendering of the deck railing, a meticulous counterpoint to the freer strokes elsewhere.
Add the finishing touches
The last hits come to the water waves in the foreground and the build-up of the swan in the ground in between. The pastel shows extraordinary freshness and immediacy; there are no signs of shaking or reversing.
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