Pondering

I hope you are enjoying the holidays and like me getting some quite time for creating art.

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Just recently, I came across this soft pastel study I did when I was in my late teens of Georgia O'Keeffe's artwork "Mule Deer Skull and Flowers". I remember I painted the desert too deep and therefore had to shorten the length of the skull. There are a couple of things I would like to go back in and start fixing but at the same time I appreciate those mistakes and acknowledge them, if I am to grow as an artist.

I decided to revisit soft pastels, this time using soft pastel pencils, painting the polar opposite of the desert, water. I have always been attracted to the surreal, quirky and different in art. Over the years, shades of orange, fish or water often make an appearance in my art. Being a Pisces might have something to do with it!

I used a photo reference for the female, I knew I wanted to do something in her hair but I did not know what. A flower of some sort with butterflies maybe? Then suddenly water lilies popped into my head, possibly my love of the artist Monet. This triggered a chain reaction of thoughts of a fish with the water dripping from the water lilies creating rings of water.

I had forgotten how easily the soft pastels smudge, I believe many soft pastel artists use a workable fixative for this purpose. A kneadable eraser helped and I also used it for blending. Building up the soft pastels in light layers made them easier to blend. I found the soft pastel pencils are good for adding detail. I think I have only started to scratch the surface with this medium. As with all art mediums, they come with their own rewards and challenges.


A word of caution, I used a soft sketching pencil for adding definition around the water droplets, the white pastel would not grip over the pencil so easily to give me nice bright highlights.

A white poster paint sharpie gave me the effect I was looking for.

Have you worked in soft pastels? What are your experiences and have you learnt any tips along the way?

Comments are welcomed and encouraged.

Until next time, happy creating and see you in 2014!

Erecura the Guardian

This artwork is for Life Book 2013 wk36, a catch up lesson for me. As usual, I deviated a bit from the lesson and ended up with a bit of a Celtic feel to this painting. Erecura is the Celtic Earth Goddess and I thought she would fit this painting perfectly. After returning from Ireland recently, I was still missing everybody terribly, especially our new granddaughter.Therefore, this is a little reference to them.

Tamara Laporte mentions in her class how sometimes she is conflicted with being a painter or an illustrator. I can identify totally as I would like to be more of a messy painter. More often than not, before I know it, I am leaning on the illustration side of things. Not to say that is a bad thing but sometimes it is good to not paint in between the lines or get bogged down with details.

Here is an earlier page of mine from Life Book 2013, notice the stencil in the background, I patted off the dylusions inks left on the front of the stencil onto spare watercolour paper, to use at a later stage. Instead of staring at a blank page this can come in useful when you don't have a clear pallet or focal point. In my case, I just hate wasting good inks!

After sketching my idea onto the textured paper, I used white gesso primer to block out the background on the main figures.

Just starting to get in the base colours for the skin tones using acrylics and caran d'ache watersoluble crayons.

After painting in the fawn, I added gesso primer around the figures and used a brayer to blend it in. I then turned my attention to the hair which I am not quite feeling yet and decided to give her a bit of a windswept look. Be mindful when working on top of dylusions inks, as they will bleed when moisture is added on top of them.

For this Life Book lesson we were supposed to use a transfer either using a printed transparency sheet or a paper print out. It was a particularly hot day here and the paint on my brush was drying out quicker than I could paint! So not ideal conditions for using the transfer method. Instead I drew this Celtic design, scanned it into Photoshop added the green gem and printed it out. After spraying it with workable fixative to set the inks, I painted over it to blend it in more with the painting.

I thought a pair of deer antlers on the girl would work well with this piece and then continued around the image adding the final touches.

Well, I was trying to aim for messy in this painting but as you can see I ended up somewhere in the middle! I don't think it is so easy getting that detail girl out of me haha! How about you? What type of artist are you? Have you changed your style, was the transition easy? I would like to hear about it!

Also in the past I have tried transfers using gel medium or hand sanitizer with a printed transparency sheet or a paper print out. I haven't had great results and I was just wondering have you had any experience with transfers? As always comments are welcomed and encouraged.

Enjoy your week, thanks for stopping by.
Until next time, happy creating!