Looking West (8x10)“Clouds are just vapor, so you want to make them appear
transparent,” he says. He has found that certain colors—
mostly lighter grays, blues and mauves—and a very light
application, one over another, achieve these effects.
Sometimes Nagel begins with an underpainting using
an alcohol wash, but not in this case. Instead, he used a
unique technique involving paper towels. “I used a whole
roll that I squeezed sideways, then I lightly pulled it across
the pastel that I’d applied lightly on the paper. I then
added another layer of pastel over that,” he says. “The
paper roll moved it, pulled it around and made it fill
the entire area.”
He went over the whitest part of the nearest cumulus
cloud about three times to achieve the desired effect.
“What I often do is put down a whiter, paler color, then go
over it with a slightly darker yellow, ochre or peach color,”
Nagel says. “That light underneath then shines through
and gives it a glow. Effects like this take a lot of practice.”
The trees in Spring Rain received equal attention.
Nagel used a generous amount and variety of color for
them, noting that Sennelier, in particular, offers many
greens from which to choose. “Some are cool, some are
warm, some have more purple, others have more red,” he
says. Nagel considered color as he formed their edges, too.
“As the light hits them toward the top, the edges become
softer,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll go in
with a darker, cooler color and then go
over it with a harder stick of greener or
browner pastel and pull up very slowly
to soften some of the edges.”Exploring a
New Passion
Originally from Cincinnati, Nagel is a
self-proclaimed “late starter” who began
working in pastel about 18 years ago. He
played competitive sports until his late
40s—he was on the U.S. Army’s baseball
team in his early years—when he real-
ized he needed to find another pastime.
His horticulture job in Denver is where
he first contemplated the exploration of
painting. “I had a crew member whose
father owned an art school,” Nagel says.
“I met his relatives—most of them were
artists—and they had a cabin in the
mountains that we’d visit, and they’d
bring oil paints for us to try out.” Nagel
eventually studied painting at the Art
Students League of Denver; the 72-year-
old now teaches night classes in pastel
for the City of Lakewood.the elements to pop.” Nagel also was careful to reflect the
painting’s land colors into the sky. “Since there was so much
green on the ground, I tried to incorporate greenish grays
into the clouds so everything would harmonize,” he says.
Nagel carries about 250 pastels in his plein air box but
keeps close to one thousand sticks in his studio. He has
mostly Terry Ludwig pastels, but he also uses Sennelier,
Nupastel, Rembrandt, Great American and any other
brand that offers the color he’s seeking. “I actually met
Terry [Ludwig] in a drawing class, before he started mak-
ing pastels in his basement and turned it into a worldwide
business,” Nagel says. “He’s a portrait painter and taught
me a lot about drawing.” His longtime friend’s square-
edged sticks won him over. “I can use them like a brush
and make a big mark,” Nagel says.
The artist painted Spring Rain on UART 400 paper
and, because it’s a heavier grit, he can put down heavier
applications and more layers of pastel. “I like for my
pastels to look like oils,” Nagel says. He moves the pastel
around on the paper a number of ways. “I use my fingers,
but I also use cloth, paper towels and sometimes even a
palette knife—although not for Spring Rain—to pull color
around,” he says. “If I use different methods, I’ll get differ-
ent edge qualities, which is so important in a painting.”Creating Transparency
A challenging aspect of creating landscapes in pastel,
Nagel says, is that while opacity is easy to accomplish
in the medium, transparency takes some trial and error.“I paint more what I feel
than what I see.”
42 Pastel Journal APRIL 2020