During couple of recent drawing classes, I did demo studies of an identical landscape in pastel on a couple of pieces of coloured card: One a buff background, the other very dark grey. This provided a comparison of technique and results working on different coloured grounds. The buff version looks perhaps more realistic: starting with adding in the darks and lights, the image resolves with the mid tone ground holding it all together: a common approach used by many over the centuries, from Rubens through Thomson to today.
The results on dark card are as you can see, significantly different. More drama and depth I’d say. The technique I used was quite different too. Having commenced by matching the light areas with the adjacent darks, the sky and far mountains almost formed themselves. I then worked on on the mid-ground forms themselves. In this case, I prefer the results, almost enough to persuade me to switch to using dark backgrounds, Rembrandt style.
Ultimately it’s a choice and well worth trying both!
