Tulip, Marigolds and Petunias

Tulip, Marigolds and Petunias

7" square 

Pan Pastels, Rembrandt and Terry Ludwig pastels

White Art Spectrum Colourfix Suede pastel card

This little painting took three stages to finish, first blocking in the tulip over a bright orange background, then the yellow-orange marigolds and greenery and most of the tulip's form, then the last details came very fast and I added the petunias to balance the composition and unify the colors. Also some little forget me knots between the flowers. 

This garden is overgrown and unreal but I don't care, it looks the way I wanted it to. Or maybe the plants just filled out enough to fill up the spaces between them. I always liked that look in garden plants. It's not weedy though, all garden flowers. I love being able to use the bright colors in a painting and still be true to life. Ruffled petunias and the tulip were both from the Pastel Spotlight challenge this month on "Violet" theme at WetCanvas, photos by BlackHorse and DAK723. The orange marigolds were more or less taken from another painting I did some time back from a photo by DAK723 but I changed their color based on ones I remembered.

This month has been a bit rough for changing weather. Not that bad for pain but I've been sleeping a lot and doing less sketching and painting. Need to get back to sketching and painting so I scheduled myself an extra hour in the garden on Wednesday's clinic visit to be able to settle out there and sketch something from life. I will be packing art supplies, probably water media.

Fruit Studies in Charcoal and Pastel

 Charcoal pear studies 8 1/2" x 11"

My cold is starting to break up, so this morning I decided to sketch in something bold enough it'd be easy to get a photo. I love doing charcoal sketching. It's so easy to get good strong values and model the forms by sketching and smudging. I use a peel off the wrap charcoal pencil, so I don't have to bother sharpening it or getting charcoal stick on my fingers. When I feel like going to charcoal I want clean and easy.

Two pears, an apple and an orange

Pastel pencil on paper 8 1/2" x 11"

Still in the same plain sketchbook I got for a Christmas present, I got into color and sketched all the fruit I had left. I ate another pear, the big orange, the smaller apple and a banana. But didn't want to eat all of it before sketching, especially those quirky bumpy off-shape pears. The nice thing is that pear shapes don't need to be symmetrical. Real ones are lopsided, lumpy, bumpy and have strange hue shifts along their sides. They come in so many colors, sometimes all on the same pear from green to pinkish! 

Two Pears 9" x 12"

Rembrandt pastel on Bee Bogus Recycled Sketch Paper

After that, I decided to add one to my sketch wall. First loosely sketched in charcoal and then started using my Rembrandt half sticks. I layered them quite a it to get subtle color changes, especially between greens and earth reds and earth yellows with a touch of violet - yeah, most of it is complements. The shadow's been glazed over with a light violet but has a good five or six dark colors in it from gray and blue to brown and green and violet.

So today was a good day for playing around and most of all working large. For me anything 9" x 12" is big, when I'm used to using small journals or doing 6" square or 5" x 7" paintings. 

Day 29 Rainbow Lorikeet

Rainbow Lorikeet 6" square

Rembrandt pastels on Uart 400 sanded pastel paper

Photo reference from WetCanvas.com Reference Image Library by RubyRedDog2, This bird was one of two photographed in a zoo but I was familiar with Rainbow Lorikeets from some photos years ago by a friend in Australia. I loved those birds. They are insanely colored and very friendly, even wild ones become semi-tame when fed as she used to feed them corn off her back porch. An entire wild flock of them came out for her when she brought them food. Some birds are just sociable like that.

I've seen one photo of an Australian bloke with about nine or ten of them perching on him all friendly, they're really good natured and sweet as your normal little pet budgerigars. I had a budgie as a kid but the Rainbow Lorikeets are even brighter. The little green budgies are almost camouflaged in a tropical forest but these flying jewels are easy to see by any creature that likes fruits and flowers. Gorgeous birds. Can't keep a bird now because my cat is afraid of birds, but I do have some fond memories.

Ari got beaten up by a sparrow when he was only two years old. He didn't realize he was a natural predator to sparrows. The hysterical sparrow did, it landed right in front of him on a shelf in the closet without seeing him. Looked up, spazzed out and flew right up at him beating his poor nose with its wings in dire peril for its life. Ari kept leaning back farther and farther, eyes wide with terror vaguely waving a paw at this mad homicidal flying thing, then made himself all round and fluffed up when it gained enough altitude to bolt out of there.

My daughter, whose cat skills far outstrip my poor indoor cat's, caught the sparrow gently with a scarf and brought it to the open kitchen window to let it out. Poor Ari went off bird watching for months, but finally came to understand that the dangerous creatures can't get through a solid window. So he likes bird watching again but will not go near one without a barrier!

He'll catch mice, but birds are right out of it. None of them are food anyway, food comes in crunchy pellets in bags and I bring it to him. He likes proper cat food, city cats' food, the good low-grain kind. Even wet food is too close to human food for his tastes. As an urban cat with a job taking care of his human, he expects urban services like food processing and the delivery of choice morsels in shiny bags. Gets excited on new-bag day and knows who it's for, but hunting for himself is not something he's ever considered. He's a well paid professional therapy cat and that's how he likes it. Weather doesn't appeal to him either. Climate control and food delivery is a cat's natural habitat, with cushions and things to claw and catnip carrots.

Did a second sketch for the day using Pan Pastels Colorless Blender on most of the page under the sky to see if it'd lighten the colors I put over it. It did beautifully, I had to layer a couple more times to get the darks in. The bottom where the land is didn't get that treatment for comparison.

Storm Sketch, pan pastels on paper

8 1/2" x 11"

The colorless blender is another useful tool. I'm glad it was included in my set of mediums, now that I know what I can do with it. What it didn't do was lighten it right off the sponge if I dabbed in the medium then the color. It will spread out color more than just letting it wear off the sponge and putting it under an area will dilute color going into it to make a soft blended effect.

3 Fruits from Life day 25 30 in 30 Challenge

3 Fruits from Life

Terry Ludwig pastels on sanded paper

Testing the new Pastel Premier sanded paper, Medium grit, Italian Clay color. I mean to do another painting on the fine grit white before posting my review but I am very happy with this paper, especially this color and grit. Having a nice medium warm neutral to paint on let me play with value a lot and I loved the soft texture of the Ludwigs on it. Got plenty of layering to get subtle colors on the fruits and then still got bright highlights with only medium pressure on them.

This was fun even if I got dusty from head to toe, literally, had to give myself a bit of a sponge bath afterward! Sometimes pastels are messy. But oh the joy when they come out this bright and sing with color!