Some Pastel Techniques and Recent History

As mentioned in a previous post, I was fortunate to be able to take off a few days from work and enroll in an Introduction to Pastels workshop by Lella Lee Edwards through the Rappahannock Art League in Kilmarnock, VA.

Marge Alderson was also in the class and it was wonderfully educational for me to listen to these women who are of my mother's generation, to talk about the early days of the Torpedo Factory and the artist organizations in Northern Virginia in the mid 1970s. My mother and Margaret Huddy were good buddies and mom ran in these same circles.

It was reassuring to go into another artist's studio and realize that there are highs and lows in everyone's working life. Lella Lee actually picked up and started working on one large pastel painting that had been sitting on her easel, untouched, she said, for five years. "I think I was just sick of flowers," she announced at one point.

Marge's children attended the same high school I did and while I don't remember her kids, I was pretty wrapped up in my own circle at that time.

I did complete several small pastels while I was there. Apparently, I work pretty quickly. I wasn't thrilled with a couple of them. One, in fact, has already been rubbed out. A second, of a ram, is staring at me now and will likely meet a similar fate. The drawing is very weak and I just can't quite be happy with it. But the subject has potential and I may give it another go with a different palette.

One piece made me very happy and just happened to be the first one I did on a scrap of some old charcoal paper she gave us to play with. It is a painting of a cabbage from my garden. When it was close to finished, but I was just not sure what it was missing, Lella Lee made her rounds and suggested that the outer leaves needs to be lightened. I reached for a light green and she pointed to a light blue. "Try that," she said. Sure enough, it was the perfect choice.

The theme for the April RAL members show is "The Color Green", so I plan to submit this if I can get down there at lunch time to put it in on Monday.

Mom helped me put a mat on it and I popped it into a frame that I had sitting around. It doesn't have the 3 inches of matting that Lella Lee recommends, but for a quick job (and cheap), I think it will do.
I do see, now, however, that I need to invest in the non-reflective glass as the cheap stuff in this frame makes it nearly impossible to see the painting. I think this is due, in part to the darker colors of the painting, so the glass is behaving like a mirror against it. But with the right glass, or in a room without windows, it works fine. You can see the camera and my hand reflected in the glass.

The Geneologist

This is a portrait of my husband, Ken.

He was deeply involved in doing some geneology reseach on the computer with the morning sun shining in on his face and he never noticed me snapping his photo.

In the early stages of the painting process he was pretty unhappy with the underlying colors. There is a lot of green, blue, purple and reds.

I'm not very happy with the background, but the only thing there was a stack of CDs and a stack of paper, so I picked up some of the greens and yellows from the face area and did a general shadowy thing.

In the end, it really does look like him and for that, I'm happy.

Swamp Drawing

There are a lot of opportunities to takes pictures of water, boats, docks and even some beaches here in the Northern Neck of Virginia. There are even more opportunities to visit, photograph, draw and paint swamp land.

I took a series of photos to show my progress on this particular pastel painting starting with an underpainting. You can also see my reference photo. In real life, the colors were bolder than what you see in the photo. I'm not sure if I actually captured the colors and values accurately... and of course, the photo of the painting may not translate accurately either. But here goes:

 This is the initial underpainting and the reference photo I took recently. It was low tide and those are mud flats with logs in the "beach" area.

 

My husband complained that the sky had become too dark. I wasn't happy at this point with the bright orange in the trees across the water and the grasses in behind the tree.

Better.

 

And Finished:

This is 8X10 on sanded paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Old Jail

In Heathsville, Virginia which is my basic mailing address, there are some wonderful historic buildings. The old jail is just one of them.

I want to repeat this with a larger painting so I can put in more details. I also think it would be a great location for some plein air work.

I'm going to two plein air events this spring/summer to see how the pros do it. I can really see how working from a photograph is completely different from working from life. Between the camera and the computer/developer the colors and values change dramatically.

Life Drawing Group Again

My President's Day holiday from work was spent with the Rappahannock Art League Life Drawing Group. They meet on Mondays from 10 to noon in the back room of the RAL Gallery on Main Street in Kilmarnock, VA. Very nice bunch of folks and some great talent there besides.

Today, after some fast gesture drawings to warm up, we did two poses. Each one was set for three 20 minutes sessions. This was, by chance, the same gal who posed for us on my last holiday. I gave her my first drawing which was face forward. I wasn't particularly thrilled with it. But I do like the second and only wished I had one more 20 minute period in which to do more finishing on it.

I used pastels. This is my first pastel drawing of a person from life. I was also working with an extremely limited palette as I left my big set of Sennelier's at home.

There was a slight shift in her position from the second to the third session so her hips took an odd turn as did the director's chair she was sitting in... but I am, over all, pretty happy with this.

Spring comes

We live in an old house (built in 1909). We found some wonderful old flowerbeds, long neglected and over the past 20 years have saved some of the old flowers and shrubs that survived without much human help.

Among those flowers are some tiny, very early daffodils that were growing up against the kitchen wall. I moved some of these out under a dogwood tree that appears along the drip line of one of the giant pecan trees. I can see them from the kitchen window.

This year, they bloomed even earlier than normal. I set up a little vinette featuring these lovely, cheerful things.

The photo is not accurately reflecting the yellows. It pushed too much yellow into the sea shell.

Pastel Journal

I splurged a little and purchased a DVD with the first 10 years of Pastel Journal. I'm up to the fifth year and finding most of the articles very interesting.

I also subscribed to the magazine itself. Not sure when my first issue will arrive. Then, all I will have to do is complete the set from 2009 until 2013.

If you really like working in pastels, as a beginner or more experienced artist, so far, I can recommend this magazine.

My mother's hands

My mom is an artist. She does lovely work in watercolor but her true love is colored pencil. She is also an extremely good knitter. She thinks of herself as a knitter, a mother, a wife and a grandmother perhaps more than she thinks of herself as an artist. But her work is very good and she has been in national level competitions.

But she finds the engagement with other artists to be trying a times. She wants to be left alone to pursue her own subjects. She has taught but doesn't like teaching. She has taken lessons, but doesn't try to emulate the instructor. She is rather independent.

She has not shown any of her work in several years. In her mid-70s now, and with some health issues, she finds the entire process of matting, framing and delivery completely exhausting and tedious. She gets frustrated when she has to pay a fee to show her work and little sells. She forgets, I think, that we live in the middle of nowhere with a permanently depressed economy and local galleries have limitations.

But she has continued to work. She has piles of matted and unmatted colored pencil paintings that no one has ever seen but for family.

As her grandkids have reached adulthood and begun the journey of decorating their own homes, they have come to realize that not everyone has had the priviledge of orginal art work on the walls as they did growing up. They complain of roommates with tacky tastes in posters and without the ability to properly hang things on the wall. Over the holidays, we had Thanksgiving dinner at her house and many of her grandchildren were there, and mom mentioned that she wanted to get rid of some of these older paintings but didn't know what to do with them.

With that, we all trooped up the stairs and the grandkids decended on her set asides and rejects like vultures on road kill. It was a little frightening how they snatched up piece after piece. My son and his girlfriend admired some older framed work and she told them to take them.

Later, I apologized for the feeding frenzy but mom said she really appreciated the delight in their eyes. "I guess I need to get back to work," she said. "Someone actually likes my stuff."

Over the same weekend, I took pictures of many of my family members including the photo of my sister that resulted in a small painting in an earlier post. Mom mentioned that she has always wanted to do a painting of a knitters hands but could never figure out how to hold the knitting needles and the camera at the same time. So, she took up the pose and I snapped a couple of pictures over her shoulder.

I still need to get the pictures to her. But I took one of them and yesterday worked up this 9X12" pastel painting.

 

Underpainting with alcohol followed by Senneliar extra soft on Mi-Teintes grey. This is still taped to the drawing board and you can see some of the over wash from the underpainting.

Jack

Jack is a cat that seduced me at work. Well, he and his brother, Samhain, both. They came home with me one Friday evening just before Halloween. Ken was not amused. In fact, he was so mad I feared we were headed for separation. There was this problem he had with me aquiring animals without fulling discussing it with him... my problem was that, had I asked about it first, he would have said, "no" and there would have been no further discussion.

Fortunately, both Jack and Samhain charmed him before the weekend was out and both boys were permitted to stay. Samhain, the black, has become Ken's cat and demands lap time twice a day from him. Jack has become more of my pet and wakes me nearly every morning before dawn by putting his foot in my mouth while I sleep.

I want very much to present Samhain in pastel. His colors are rich and varied running from rose to pitch.

Jack has been an easier target and since he communicates with me more than Samhain, I have found it easier to get good reference photos of him. Here is a pastel I completed today.

 

Second painting

I have not touch a pastel in a very long time. In fact, I think I was probably 18 years old the last time I handled pastel. At the time, I did not think I did very well.

But I purchased pastels and I am determined to learn how to use them.

Here is my first effort. From life. It's a coffee cup that I set in a sunny window yesterday morning. I was amazed at how fast my light changed! Yikes.

This is on the backside of Mi Tienes paper. I'm happy with it. The photo of the drawing is much yellower than reality, I think.

Today, I went out and took pictures of the water near my neighbor's dock and will attempt do do a nice landscape at some point with those beautiful reflections.

This afternoon, I spent about 3 hours working on a portait of my sister. She lives in Colorado and came out at Thanksgiving to visit. I took her picture outside in the sunshine on the deck at our parent's house.

I started a colored pencil drawing from the same photo and I just could not get the eyes right. I put it aside but I did share it with her via Facebook. She liked it, but I like this one much more. I'ts looser and may not have a lot of resemblance, but I'm very pleased.

 

 

This is on a small 5X7 Ampersand Pastel Board. The center of this one board was different from the others in the pack and seemed smoother, but it took TONS of pastel. I love this board. I plan to try out other kinds of pastel supports. I alternated between hard and soft and blended very little with my fingers. I have not signed it yet and will wait a couple of days and look at it before I declare it completely done.

 

Detail work is very hard with soft, stumpy pastels. This is so tiny, I suspect I would be happier working larger as the lines do not have to be so fine and I could come back and cut back into it.

 

I made the mistake of leaving the receipt for the pastels out on the table and hubby saw it and is fixated on the California warning about some of the pastels being carcinegetic. Considering he smokes, I don't think he has much room to talk, but he fusses when I work without gloves.