Soft Pastels - Work in Progress

Just a quick post from me today.  I'm still recovering from an upper respiratory infection that knocked me out this week so I'll just share a work in progress with you.

As you now, I've recently started exploring the world of painting with soft pastels.

One of the video tutorials I watched was about painting a dog's eye from a reference photo. 

Well since I'm a horse person, and I happened to have a good photo of my horse, Star's eye, I thought  it only natural that I should try to paint it instead of the dog's eye.

I started it last weekend and it has languished untouched all week.  I plan to work on it some more tomorrow.  It has a long way to go!

The thing that has struck me most as I've been working on it is how many colors are reflected my mare's black coat.  I'm really going to have to get working on her smooth hair tomorrow!

The Hay Field

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, I have recently got back into painting with soft pastels.  After several years of no art in my life at all, and then a few years creating art digitally, it's been fun, interesting and therapeutic to put pastel to paper and see what I can create.

The first thing I realized was that, if I wanted to work in my current studio, I would need better light.  My studio is actually the formal dining room of our home (we use the breakfast nook as our dining room).

My studio, which I named "Mockingbird Studio", is in the center of the house and although it's open on two sides to the living room and kitchen, it doesn't get direct light.  That was fine when working on the computer, not so useful when working on an easel.

I started looking for lamp setups for an art studio and found what I needed in the Daylight Lamp.  It was a bit pricey, but I had a birthday coming up and I put it on my wishlist.

My wonderful husband bought it for me for my birthday and we rearranged my desk a bit to enable me to use it and my easel next to my computer.

This will enable me to view video tutorials while I'm working alongside at my easel.  I love it!

Anyway, on to my latest artwork (sneak preview above).

On the way home from seeing my horse at the barn last weekend, I caught sight of a lovely view that I really wanted to try and paint in pastels.  If I had my camera with me, I probably would have stopped and taken a reference photo.  As it was I tried to commit it to memory as I sped by and when I got home, I did something I haven't done in decades - I sketched the scene!

As you can tell, I'm not a sketch artist, but I was able to get enough of a feel for the scene that today I decided to try and do it in pastels.

I simplified it by only putting in two round hay bales, instead of the 12 I had in my sketch which I think would have been a) impossible to do and b) made the picture look too "busy".

This is the first one I've tried to do from scratch, without following a tutorial or a lesson in a book.

Naturally, I can see things now that could/should be changed to make it less amateurish but I think that on the whole, I'm pretty happy with the way it came out.

New Tricks - Wherein I try out a new artistic endeavour

Many years ago, while still living at home in England with my parents, I enjoyed painting.  Nothing fancy, you understand.  Just using reference photos to do small painting of English cottages and rural scenes for my own personal enjoyment.

I've never had any formal art training, other than the basic stuff learned while taking my Art "O" Level (G.C.E.) at school.

Then I got married and moved to the U.S, and art just wasn't part of my life anymore for many years.

Since then, I remarried and my current husband introduced me to the world of digital art. This worked out great because we had opened our hearts and our home to a number of long-haired felines who like to get into everything. I could only imagine what a mess it would create if a cat went blundering through my paint pots while I was in the middle of something.

Working on my computer, I can just turn it off when I'm done and not have to worry about having to "cat proof" everything.

I'm very happy with my digital art and photography, but I've often wondered if I could actually still create art with more traditional media - watercolors, oils, pastels.

Earlier this week, one of my Facebook friends Judy Adamson, who is an artist living in Wales, posted a link to one of her old blog posts: Five Simple Steps to Painting in Pastels.

I was inspired!  It looked like fun and I realized the cats wouldn't be able to knock over any pots of paint or water.

So this morning after breakfast, Eric and I found ourselves in the art department at the local hobby store, perusing their offerings.  I quickly picked up a pack of pastels, a pad of pastel paper, a kneaded eraser and some tortillons.

Then I started  wondering where on earth I was actually going to do this painting with pastels.

My "studio" is pretty much taken up with my computer, books, binders and assorted other stuff. So where would I put an easel?  Would I just paint on the dining room table?

My questions seemed to be answered when I saw this easel.  It holds art supplies inside and was of a size that could easily fit on my desk - I would just need to scoot my iMac back a bit when using it. 

When it's not being used, it could be stored safely away and could even come on the road if I feel like doing some work "en plein air".

Here's a photo of it setup in my studio.  I'll probably have to get some better lighting in there but this is what I have for now.

I spent much of the day putting pastel to paper and had a blast  (I didn't realize at the time that I could have set the easel to a lower angle for pastel work - shows you what I know)

The work in progress is shown below.

Not a masterwork by any stretch of the imagination, but hey - I'm still learning what angle to put the easel, so what do you expect? LOL.

Resources

Artists Network - Pastel Art Techniques