Couldn’t resist trying out this figure using soft pastels on ArtSpectrum Colourfix sanded paper (in a tan color).
Pastels
A Cup of Coffee… and Comparing pastel papers
These pastel paintings were done based off an image by นิธิ วีระสันติ from Pixabay.
I used the same pastel palette for both (mostly) — Blick, Richeson, and Terry Ludwig sticks.
The paper on the left is Art Spectrum Colourfix, and the paper on the right — which I found easier to work with — is Clairefontaine Pastelmat.
Beach scene
This pastel work, done on an approx. 12×10 scrap of white Pastelmat, was based in part off an image by Somchai Sumnow from Pixabay, but also off of some of my own reference photos of Hawaiian beaches.
Mostly I was interested in the different shades of blue and also how different brands of pastel lay down on the paper. There are some weird diagonal lines, probably creases from the original 19×25 size of the Pastelmat sheet,
And, just for fun, comparing the above pastel piece with another beach piece I did 3 or 4 months ago with acrylics, sand texture, glass beads, and iridescent paint.
A Profusion of Sunflowers #3
After painting the sunflowers in my two previous posts — as much as fun as it was — I wanted to make my flowers more artistic and less symbolic. I was reading blog posts from Karen Margulis, a pastel painter, and was inspired to up my game.
This was done in pastel on a terracotta-colored 6×8 Pastel Premier 4-ply board.
A Profusion of Sunflowers
This was just a quickie because I didn’t have a lot of time, yet I wanted to paint something. It was done on a 6×8 white Pastel Premier 4-ply board (from a sampler set I got at Dakota Pastels a few years back).
I didn’t even use all the pastel sticks shown below — but one thing I would do differently would be to paint the centers last so as not to smear the yellow shades with the darker brown.
It’s Summer… Time for Ice Cream!
I did this painting in soft pastel based on an Image by Chil Vera from Pixabay.
It’s on a “Slate” colored 6×8 4-ply Pastel Premier board that I bought some time ago when I trying out soft pastels. (So far, I’m still favoring acrylic paints, but this was fun to do!) The pastels I used are shown at right.
My First-Ever ACEO’s
ACEO is an acronym for “Art Cards, Editions and Originals” and their standard size is 2-1/2 x 3-1/2 inches. I bought a packet for 10 ACEO watercolor papers by Swarthmore a few years ago, but never used them.
These I did using hard and soft pastels, just for the heck of it, as I was watching HGTV. The green palm tree is based off a Winslow Homer watercolor I have a print of. I’d like to do some using acrylics at some point.
Portrait of a Toddler
This work was done in graphite and NuPastel. It’s based on a photo from PxHere.
Karen Margulis Patreon Follow-Along: Shiny Vase
Karen Margulis offered her Patreon members a demo of how to paint shiny objects. Using her reference photo — but modifying it for my own purposes — I did this study on Colourfix Original (Soft Umber color), and used both hard and soft pastels.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 