Friday, February 27, 2009

Pastels #4 and #5

I'm not good at practicing, but now that I have my pastel collection nicely organized, it's time to work on the mechanics of the little rascals. Some people have to practice in order to learn, and I'm a slow learner with little attention span for practicing.




NuPastels and Rembrandts are being used for practice. No reason to waste the good stuff.

When I use watercolors, I have to spend a lot of time doing a drawing before painting. I'm dyslexic (not bad, but enough to be inconvenient), and lines sometimes take off in wrong directions. With oils and pastels the base drawing is being skipped for now. There is time to spot errors and to correct them as I work without ruining everything, so I can focus on learning to use the media instead of a good base drawing.

The nice thing about pastels is that I can spend time with color relationships without having to mix the colors needed. Since I'm in the learning stage, I'm not concerned with wonky drawings but with using the colors and seeing what works for me and what does not.

When I take my glasses off, I cannot see the dust that is left.

Both 5"x7", Canson Mi-Teintes smooth side.

3 comments:

caseytoussaint said...

It looks like you're off to a good start, Jenny! I always start working with my cheap pastels for base colors, and then as the painting takes shape I move into the better ones.

Sarah Ketelaars said...

These look great.

Lynn said...

Jenny, these are lovely! I really like the soft pink and blue background of the second one. It really shows off the pears nicely.