Dawn Skyscape in Oil Pastels

Dawn Skyscape 5" x 7"

Neopastel on Dawn Pink Canson Mi-Tientes

This morning I started a landscape series just working scenes out in principle, using one of my favorite oil pastels brands. I love the Caran d'Ache Neopastels - they blend well, mix easily, have medium softness but a very high pigment load so they're good and opaque.

An email student showed me some works and I needed to demonstrate how to control the land area to make the sky predominate in a skyscape. I added a little water feature to reflect the sky and lead into it, played with various colors and cloud shapes and did this entirely by design and memory. Some things just work well that way and I've sketched this type of cloud from life many times!

That's the key to memory drawing. Do the same subject over and over, preferably many small easy sketches as opposed to a few careful ones. It'll get to become second nature and you can pull it out no matter when you want it.

Clouds Coming In, Underpainting

Clouds Coming In...

Underpainting

hard pastel on paper

Today I mostly planned this painting, from a photo in the WetCanvas Reference Image Library. I wanted to do another strong cloudscape, but the photo has other interesting features like that reflecting water. So I'm not sure where this is going, but I'll find out when I get there. To some extent I'm about to abandon the photo in favor of letting the painting find its way.

I used red earths under all the foliage and brush because the greens are richer with a ruddy underpainting, but used blue under the sky and water to make that vivid. I might lighten the sky some when I go back with softer pastels to create the entire scene. I might also simplify it some, though it seems to lead toward the center on the land with those pools of water. It's a little complex for something that small but I'll see what it becomes when I go back to it tomorrow. If I don't like something I can always paint it out.

Pastels are opaque and hard pastels erase easily, right back to bare paper. I'll see how this goes.

White Curcuma exotic flower

White Curcuma

photo reference by Dewi on WetCanvas.com

Yesterday I didn't paint at all, was too tired after doing my clinic appointment. I had planned to do pastel plein air in the clinic garden but my van arrived half an hour early - after some preliminary photos I went out back and there it was. However, before I went, I did mat and frame the Bluebird painting, which does count as daily art to me as it's far more physical than most of my painting.

I used more blending in this White Curcuma painting than in most, contrasting a stick blended texture on the central flower with a blended loose background and some linear accents. I didn't prime the page with sanded primer, just worked directly on the 180lb white rough watercolor paper of my Stillman & Birn Beta pastel journal. I also taped a sheet of tracing paper over the page to protect the art, taped just on the outside right edge to fold over it. This has worked well for six pages of my Pastel Journal and I have high hopes of finishing 25 good pastel paintings in it.

Sketch wall with three of my paintings framed, bluebird is upper right.

So that was some serious accomplishment. I don't think I managed anything on Tuesday either but I could be wrong, posted it if I did. So much for memory, the fibro fog chews it up. The shot helps give me some energy but the outing itself to get it is so draining that I don't usually manage anything afterward.

So much for good intentions. Daily art is still "health permitting" and yeah, there is a reason I'm living on SSI instead of working full time as an artist. If I could do 40 hours a week painting and selling, I would so definitely go back to full time art - but that doesn't work when my disabilities don't permit more than a short session at best in a day.

Pearl in Pearlescent Pan Pastels

Pearl in Pearlescent Pan Pastels

From life

on Stillman & Birn Beta 180lb rough white paper

Today's painting is an experiment with a new art supply. Always a joy. I'll be writing it up in more depth on Rob's Art Supply Reviews later, maybe tomorrow though as I'm feeling pretty tired. 

Painting a pearl to look like an actual pearl rather than a ping pong ball or something else opaque has been a lifelong goal. I saw paintings in museums as a kid, Renaissance and later, where artists did that. They put nobles in velvet with pearl and jeweled ornaments and draped goddesses in pearl necklaces and it looked as if you could reach into the painting and touch those precious things. I thought of them as the showoff stuff of art. Who needed a wealth of actual jewelry if you could paint it so well you couldn't tell it wasn't real? As many pearls and rubies as you wanted were right in your paintbox!

The only reason people like them is how they look, right? So paintings of them are as cool as the real thing. Not true for food or clothes but may still be true for precious gems. Ironically, today's synthetic rubies and sapphires are quite real and no more costly than cut crystal, they're chemically and physically the same with perfect color and any size you like. 

Being able to paint pearls though, is as rare a skill as it ever was. Bucket list item accomplished! I could have used the regular tints and gotten a good effect, but I like the Pearlescent Pans. There's an extra little shine to everything and the heavy glitter effect of the Coarse mediums is fun, sparkly, like those party nights when your friends toss glitter in your hair right before you dance. 

Pearlescent Pan Pastels Colors

plus four Mediums, Coarse and Fine black and white

The six colors are convenience colors in spectrum hues. I like them as much as the Tints they resemble, they'll give an extra sheen to many subjects. The fine texture effect is subtle and might go unnoticed in a painting, the Coarse is like throwing glitter in it and delightful for that.

Art journals folks will have a ton of fun with these, but fine artists can get good special effects with them too.

Winter Pines

Winter Pines

5" x 7"

Rembrandt pastels on Bee Bogus Recycled Rough sketch paper

Photo reference by PaintBoss on WetCanvas.com

A third painting for the September 2014 Pastel Spotlight challenge, "Blue." This photo reference was posted as part of the lesson showing a variety of hues, the surface of the snow was distinctly lighter and more purplish than the somewhat green-cast blue sky. I enhanced those differences a bit but the camera really pushed it farther. Light patches on the snow field were fun, the shadows of other trees were making that foreground area interesting. 

I'd worked out how to do snow laden pines years and years ago while playing with colored pencils, distinctly remembered doing a Christmas card design with them as my first successful snow covered pines. This time I got much more colorful working with pastels and sketched just the darks in the pines in with charcoal, then got at the rest entirely with pastels. As usual on unsanded paper I did some finger blending in early layers, then finished by rough layers of side strokes and heavier strokes over it.

Bluebird in Pastel

Bluebird

7" x 10" Pastel on Artagain paper

Photo reference for the above by Dave Slaughter on WetCanvas.com, where it's in the Reference Image Library. I had fun using my 60 Rembrandt half sticks on a pad that I know fits in my backpack with them.

These are practice and field tests for my using those pastels outdoors. I can get some good effects just using these, and the color range is sufficient for anything I want to paint when I'm out. They are a lot of fun and not that expensive. I almost got the 120 color set but I'd also wanted a watercolor set and some Pan Pastels so I went for the smallest set size that'd work for plein air.

It was a good choice. 90 or 120 colors are great if I'm going to be at home but when I'm out I want a smallish set that can be on my lap at the same time the drawing board or pad is. That became a serious point. 

I also think I'm going to be goofing around on the Artagain and Bogus papers with charcoal some more. Love how that goes so fast and comes out so powerful, it's a great sketch medium either under pastels or by itself. Shows up on the sketch wall just fine!

Orange Lily - Pastel ACEO

Just a small painting today.

Orange Lily is 3 1/2" x 2 1/2", an ACEO on gray ClaireFontaine PastelMat done with a 25 color Girault Landscape assortment supplemented with a red and a red-violet stick that I bought separately because the Landscape assortment lacked either a red or a violet. The photo reference is from the May Spotlight challenge on WetCanvas.com.

Every month the Spotlight challenge includes a lesson, this month's topic is Edges. So in this small painting I focused on the soft to vanished edges in the background, softened edges on some of the stems and leaves with some linear accents to sharpen up edges on some buds, leaves and of course the main flower. It came out vigorous and lively.

One of the nice things about working small is that I'm forced to keep things simple. I can't noodle after details of veins and spots in the petals, have to focus on the important shapes and graceful lines of the subject. I like how it came out. The contrast between finger blended background and stick-blended or unblended strokes is a bit stronger in person.

Finger blending mutes and dulls pastels. It creates perfect loose soft edges at the cost of some vibrance. The pigment crystals get broken down and crushed to more of a matte look. That's something I use to advantage sometimes in painting so that the main subject pulls forward with more intensity and texture.