Pastel - Amelia in the pool

This is based on a photograph of my granddaughter, taken in the hotel swimming pool on her recent holiday in Bulgaria. It's more vibrant than the previous two pastel pictures because I bought a better set of pastels, which stand out more than the rather cheap and cheerful set I was using last week.

Amelia in the pool

Pastels Demonstration

We held a special event in our Afan Nedd Artists’ Group last night. Professional artist Sue McDonagh (as seen on Portrait Artist of the Year) gave a demonstration on using chalk pastels. Sue is a brilliant artist, who paints in both oils and pastels. I love her pastel paintings of children by the seaside, and last night she gave us a demonstration of how she uses chalk pastels to build up one of these.

The danger of watching a demonstration by a professional is, of course, that you end up comparing what you see appearing in front of you to your own work, and getting depressed because you know that it’s nowhere near as good, and you think it will never be this good. Alright, so it’s a mental hurdle to get over. But thankfully this doesn’t bother me too much since I know that in real terms I’m still a beginner. I may never get to where I’d like to be as an artist, but what the hell – I’m really enjoying the journey. 

What a good evening we were treated to. The closest thing I can compare to what I saw is magic. Sue prefers working from life, but for obvious reasons she was working from a photograph in the demo. Sue was using special pastel paper or card which has a surface like very finely grained sandpaper, and which was a mid-brown colour.  She’d already sketched out the basic figures in charcoal. I wondered whether the charcoal would muddy the pastels when they were applied on top. Not at all. It was amazing to watch how with some seemingly very simple stokes of the pastels the figures appeared on the page. There was no one moment when it suddenly all zinged into focus, but after about 15 – 20 minutes you could see the figures had really emerged from the dark outline and the dark background. It was spell binding really, and it kept getting better, and better, and better. 

It’s inspired me to have a go with chalk pastels myself. A couple of decades ago I tried to make a couple of pictures using oil pastels to copy a couple of pictures by Monet. As they say – results were disappointing. I have a set of oil pastels, but no chalk pastels. I have had a little windfall this week, with a pan and ink commission, so I put the proceeds into ordering a set of chalk pastels and some special paper. If they arrive by Wednesday, then I’m going to have a bash. I have some photos of my grandchildren, Ollie and Amelia on the beach.

Tips from Sue

·       If you’re using a white piece of paper, then you’re fighting against the white all the time you make the painting. It can give your pictures a children’s colouring book appearance – which is fine if that’s what you want, but is something you need to think about when you’re choosing the paper/card that you want to work on.

·       Sketch the figures in charcoal first. If you sketch in normal/graphite pencil, then you’re fighting against the pencil marks.

·       Think carefully about the colours you want to use, and especially whether you need to use warm or cool shades of the same colours.

·       Work from patches of dark colours to patches of progressively lighter ones

·       There’s no need to use white, black or grey. You can use other colours to make shade and shadows. A light magnolia colour can have the same effect as white.

·       Don’t blend or mix colours.. This will make them murky or muddy. You can apply a soft pastel directly on top of another colour

·       Don’t try to rub out or erase if you make a mistake. Brush the area lightly with a soft brush, which has the effect of diffusing the area, and will remind you that you want to change it before you finish.

·       If you’re painting figures on a beach, for example, then when you make reflections in water, reflected colours tend towards integration – that is warm colours become cooler, and cool colours become warmer.

·       Don’t be too obsessive about covering the whole surface of the painting with colour. Small patches where the colour of the paper can just be made out can be something which makes your painting seem fresh and have life.

·       Know when to stop. You can lose the energy and vitality of the painting by overworking it.

I've made 2 attempts since Wednesday. Here's the first - an original based on my own photo of my grandson: - 

Ollie

- and this second is my copy of part of one of Sue's most popular originals: - 

Copy of Sue McDonagh roriginal

Zara's Metro Station

So, having finished off the Evacuees painting, Zara, my daughter, has said she'd like a painting of a Paris Metro station. I began sketching it out on Wednesday evening, and then spent a couple of hours on it today. Here are the two photos I took at different stages: -

Evacuee Painting - Finished.

Here it is then: -

Might be interesting to compare this with the first photo we took: -

Evacuee Project

Another two hours further down the line tonight. Here's where we started this evening : -

- and here's where we finished this evening: -