Ooops! Missed my target posting day!
What’s going on, you might ask? Well, aside from helping my significant other to rebuild our front (or is it back?) porch -- it is physically at the back of the house, but it is the main door -- I have been doing the usual, that is learning new stuff! Eric Rhoads is to blame yet again! Earlier this week, he had an artist demonstrating pastels. I tried pastels in a workshop a couple of years ago and found that I didn’t like them, mainly because of the mess they make. However, I had never really looked at someone using them. It was mesmerizing! How quickly he could fill a space with color! And how loose it could be! I have pretty much given up on painting loosely. Even when I set out to do a loose piece, my “this-has-to-be-just-so” brain takes over and pretty soon I am using a #1 or #0 brush and I’m in there perfecting things till the cows come home. I thought I had accepted the fact that I was just not a loose painter. But watching this artist maneuver the pastel sticks woke the sleeping beast. So even before the demonstration was finished, I was up in the studio checking out what pastel supplies I had in my inventory (it’s like an art supply store up there…) I found I had pastel paper and a box of brand new sticks I had bought a few years ago, just in case..... I spent the rest of the day watching “Pastels for Beginners” videos on youtube (Yay youtube!!) So after getting the basic do’s and don’ts, some of which I would never have thought of on my own (like tilting the surface slightly forward so the dust falls directly on a tray, or a piece of sticky tape as I discovered in another video) I attacked my first pastel. Of all things, to keep this simple(!), I started painting a woman’s face, without a reference photo, just for fun. Although I will never claim it to be good, I am happy with the results, considering that it is drawn from imagination and a first piece using the medium with a very limited range of colors, which turns out to be more important in pastels than other mediums. Of course I had to fiddle with details in the eyes and the mouth, but the rest is quite loose for me. I enjoyed the experience, and am impatiently awaiting a used pastel set I found on Ebay. I doubt that I will ever create finished (ie. sellable) paintings with pastels, because framing them is even more complicated than watercolors. However, I think that doing studies before starting a painting in another medium would be a very interesting use for pastels. I rarely do studies now, mainly because it takes just as long to do a study as a painting in watercolor or oils, so why not just do the painting! But pastels are quick, colorful and modifiable, just the qualities you need to do a study. They are also very portable, so they might get me outside to do some plein air work!
1 Comment
Debbie
9/24/2020 06:44:04 pm
Lovely lady...She looks a little bewildered though. I can't help but wonder what's bothering her. Maybe she had a hard day. ...the dirty dog ran across her newly washed floor again and the twin babies cried all afternoon. Perhaps as that was going on her husband called to say he was going to be late just as her mother in law popped in to visit...
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AuthorMy name is Claire Bureau. Archives
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