Pastels

Snowscape in Color

| cathmary1030

Here is my snowscape done in color. The snow is partly pink, blue and yellow, and very nearly white where the small bushes are. I removed the little pine tree at the suggestion of a member of Karen Margulis’ Patreon group for pastel classes. Most of the pastels used were Richeson hand-rolled, which is fast becoming my favorite brand.

(I have the comparison between the value study and the color version below. The original image was by Alain Audet from Pixabay.)

This is how the two versions compare:

original value study

Value Study for Snowscape

| cathmary1030

Today, on Karen Margulis‘ Patreon page, she challenged us to do a painting using only hard pastels like NuPastels, Rembrandts, Cretacolor, etc. Well, my Dick Blick Artist’s Soft Pastels are roughly the hardness of Rembrandts, so I chose to use those.

Then I decided to do a value study for a snowscape based off a Pixabay image by Alain Audet from Pixabay. I may end up using this as an underpainting for that snowscape, but I suppose it could stand alone. I did this on Sand-colored Pastelmat, 9×12.

value study

And these are the sticks I used.

Bog in Winter

| cathmary1030

This work is based off a photo by Pexels from Pixabay. I did it on a 9×12 piece of Pastelmat in sand color. I did an alcohol wash underpainting, using NuPastels in orange, rust and deep dark blue. Most of my pastels were Blue Earths and Richeson Hand-rolled, the latter quickly becoming my go-to pastel sticks.

Pink Rose

| cathmary1030

For this painting I used one of my own reference photos — taken last spring of a rose on one of our bushes. We got this rosebush (all of our rosebushes, actually) down in Texas Hill Country at Antique Rose Emporium. I love it because it is powerfully fragrant. So many pretty roses seem to have no fragrance at all.

I did this using willow charcoal and NuPastels, on Colourfix Original in Soft Umber.

New Pastels! Some Terry Ludwigs

| cathmary1030

Received my first Terry Ludwig pastels today. Seems like a lot of pastelists prefers Terry Ludwigs to other brands, or at the very least, consider them among their top 5 brands to use. Rather than buying a pre-determined set, though, I chose to fill in some holes in my own collection with individual sticks. And naturally, I had to buy the famous V100 “Eggplant” color, which I’m excited to try!

If I like them — and actually use them — I may buy a full set at a later date.

Trying out UART 400 Paper

| cathmary1030

Today I painted the same scene as yesterday, using the same pastels, but using UART 400 paper (again from my Jackson’s Art sampler set). This paper was easier to use, and I enjoyed it very much. The marks I made were much bolder — automatically — on the UART 400 paper.

Image by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay

And here are the two paintings side by side. The velour version appears much softer, almost as if the image is blurry.

Trying out Hahnemühle Velour Paper

| cathmary1030

Today I tried velour paper that I received in my sampler from Jackson Art. It was a very different texture; it feels to me the pastels just lay down on the top of the paper. And that the paper almost “resists” side strokes. It was fun to try, using Richeson, Blue Earth, Dick Blick and my one Terry Ludwig pastel, but I’m not certain I would buy this paper on a regular basis.

The reference image is by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay

The pastels I used

3 Pears on a Plate

| cathmary1030

I did this work from life, using a sheet of Colourfix Original paper in Dark Green Leaf shade. I did not do any underpainting, and was using Richeson Hand-rolled and some of my new Mount Vision pastels. The Richeson pastels, to my mind, really work well on this paper, especially if I don’t do an underpainting in NuPastel.