Day 27 Heavy Metal Pear

Heavy Metal Pear 6" square

Henri Roche' pastels on Uart 400 sanded paper

No photo reference for this, only the weird shaped little green pear that already got featured in Three Fruits sitting on a black surface that I jazzed up with colors because I could. It wound up having an abstract look and a strong triad color harmony, odd because I never do triad color harmony but this time I like it. The pear really shines. I meant it to look matte rather than shiny, using metallic pastels was a way to give it a particular look that worked well. 

Of course being metallic it also reflects whatever's in front of it. This time I was wearing black so I didn't get that pinkish look on the silver like on Silver Fish. Red or orange shirts do strange things with metallic colors! Or even white, it's a lot of fun for me to wear that orange shirt and come close to a white on white composition in cold daylight where all the shadows are a clear violet cast blue. Ideas for another time.

I'm happy with today's painting and happier still that the 30 in 30 Challenge has helped me get back into daily painting. I might be using watercolour markers for half of them but I'm also sketching more too and sometimes the daily painting isn't the only thing I do in a day. Much thanks to Leslie Saeta for the challenge!

I'll be trying to keep on with daily art during February, weather permitting.

Day 23 of 30 in 30 Challenge Silver Fish

Silver Fish

8" x 10" Henri Roche' pastels on Strathmore Artagain paper

Photo reference by lisilk on WetCanvas.com

I love these pastels. I have a few precious pieces of Henri Roche' pastels that a friend gave me, and I just got a package from Isabelle at Maison du Pastel with samples of the new Metallic range! Lovely metallics. They have nine gold, nine silver and nine copper variations and on the silver that goes from a near-white to a near-black, making value painting possible in metallic colors. 

I have a number of ideas for these and of course the first one I actually tried is the wonderful iridescence of living fish. If there's any color that seems impossible to be in nature, a fish somewhere will be that color. Be that screaming hot pink, fluorescent green or bright metallic silver, fish come in all the colors humans can imagine or formulate.

That experiment was a total success but the Artagain paper is annoying. I found out the regular Roche' pastels don't like it. The softer metallics adhere beautifully but my beloved Roche' Ultramarine, which seems like it steps up the saturation of ultramarine another two notches sometimes, didn't adhere well at all. 

So I'll be doing another version of this painting or a similar subject on PastelMat, perhaps with some PanPastels underpainting or background stuff. I'm going to play with the subject and test the pastels on several types of paper. I'm betting Canson Mi-Tientes smooth side works a whole lot better than the too-smooth Artagain surface, which just felt like it seriously lacked tooth. I noticed this especially in the coverage of the first blended layers, when I expect quite a lot of adherence it kept moving around and created a lot of dust. Heck, I might even test them in my sketchbook, see what soft vellum drawing paper does. It'd be worth the strokes to do a small orange or something.

Yesterday was spent doing the first layer of this painting and sleeping a lot, so I posted that double page of Ari sketches I did to make up for the 14th and at least had something from this month to go up. Tomorrow who knows? I'll guess when I get there. 

Shimmering Male Mallard

Shimmering Male Mallard
5" x 7"
Pan Pastels on Maize color ClaireFontaine PastelMat
Photo reference by DAK720 on WetCanvas.com in the December Pastel Spotlight challenge.

Painted for my review of Metallic Pan Pastels on my other blog, thought I'd share him here too since he came out so sparkling well. Metallic Pans mixed with other Pans colors like Pthalo Green produce a shimmering iridescence - and I've always been fascinated by iridescent feathers. Mallards intrigued me all my life and I got to see them in person as a small child, so naturally this is the outgrowth of a long study.

Enjoy! I expect to be painting more often now that the weather's getting better and the days longer again.