consider the paper

This week I am teaching a workshop with wonderful, eager teenagers. Teaching is a valuable and fulfilling activity in many ways. In addition, it makes us think and break down the action of painting, what we do intuitively, into small incremental steps.
First look at the paper color. There are endless possibilities. Rather than teach a more complicated underpainting technique we chose one paper color to direct the painting.Above (top) is the standard white (Rives BFK). Below is a black paper (Canson I think). Tomorrow we will use paper colors we make.
After doing a small (1"x2" sketch) and a notan the goal was to block out the landscape into 5 colors. First, choose the darkest dark mass and the lightest mass. The darkest mass was about a 3-4 on the scale and the lightest (sky) was 9-10. Choose the remaining 3 colors along the value scale and arrange according to light to dark. If this is done correctly there is a sense of distance, foreground and background - already.

After the masses are blocked in and rubbed down to the smallest amount of pastel possible on the paper and then sprayed, the students are ready to move forward. The next step is to use new colors(and some of the already selected 5) just to give an idea of volume. No detail.
After that is laid out the painting can already read well. Last step is when the artist really answers, "why am  painting this?"(concept)  and makes the diva (focal point.)
This is a basic outline made for the younger artist but applicable to any age beginner.
Have fun painting!