Tag: Pastels

My studio

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If you want to see somewhere full of paintings you could look round my studio. There are paintings of people, abstracts, animals, landscapes, buildings, cars, plants, or anything else you can think of.

I tend to use acrylic on canvas but also paint in watercolours and gouache. I have worked with pastel and with pencils and ink pens. I like anything that makes marks. Once at college I even drew with boot polish.

I paint on canvas and paper but I have painted on wooden doors when I was a student..

So yes I’m an artist, I can’t stop!

Pastel sea

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I did a pastel workshop a few months ago and I found it quite difficult to get a good likeness of the sea.

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The detail is so hard to reproduce. Especially the soft, spray, and foam areas. The colours are also difficult. As you add pastels to the paper surface it catches in the “tooth” of the paper. The problem is that some of the paper’s are like sand paper, and could take the skin off your fingers! I wonder how to handle the pastels to get a softer effect.

I think I would go back to another workshop to gain more skills. I enjoy trying out new materials and techniques. There will be a charge for it, but it is worth it for the experience.

 

Yesterday’s drawings

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It’s been too hectic to post much over the last couple of days, I was getting ready for out makers market at Spode. …I only sold a couple of things, ah well there is always next time.

But yesterday morning I went out with Stoke Urban sketchers to draw the old colliery buildings at Chatterly and Whitfield enterprise zone. A former colliery closed in the 1980’s, I remember visiting when there was a mining museum there. You could walk through some of the old mine workings and he a feeling of what it was like to work underground.

Sadly the museum closed down due to lack of visitors, but I have heard that volunteers are trying to bring something back to the site.

We were outside the perimeter fence, somewhere on the path in the nature reserve that now surrounds the site.

The buildings are very big, there are many stories to them, with arches and windows in the side of the buildings. Huge winding wheels look miniscule where they sit at the top of the building, and guard rails are placed on either side if them. The main building is starting to get covered in foliage, eventually it could end up looking like an ancient relic or monument.

Metal frames and wheels also dotted the horizon, I did a pen drawing, a couple of pencil sketches, and a pastel and ink picture.

Being surrounded by other skilled artists really encouraged me to try and capture the architecture of the landscape. Drawing in a group can help your confidence. Even my partner had a go!

 

Pastel workshop

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I went to a pastel drawing workshop today. We were shown how to use various grades of “toothed” paper. It was like drawing on fine sandpaper .

The smoothest grade was used with soft pastels (not the oily sort but the dry powdery ones). You could use a silicone spreader, I think it was called, or your fingers and hands to blend the colours.

First you make broad sweeps of tones, all of similar colours, so a light blue, mid blue and dark blue or grey for instance. You smudge them on the paper, then you add layers, working into each layer and dragging the pastels about with the spreader/smudger. You can get interesting marks and edges using this tool.

Then you overlay other colours to contrast, say an orange or a pink, adding detail as you go. Finally adding the darkest and lightest colours, which seem to float on top of the others.

The second paper was rougher and you must not get it damp or the surface will come away. It was coloured a turquouse blue. This paper was so rough you were not supposed to smudge it as it would destroy the texture. You had to draw with thinner layers of pastel and in a much more impressionistic style.

The third paper was really rough like sandpaper. The tutor said sometimes people fetch the skin off their fingers blending it. Better to swiftly smudge it with the flat if your palm. This paper could be wetted with an alcohol based liquid which allowed the pastels to blend and run. As the liquid quickly dried you could draw over it and smudge it with the silicone spreader. or use a pastel pencil for more definition.

I gained a lot of information from the workshop and will be doing some more work in pastels.