ArtTutor.com is Closing its Virtual Doors!

| cathmary1030

ArtTutor.com, the website based in Liverpool, England, where I got most of my drawing training in Phil Davies’ Drawing Essentials course, is shutting down as of the end of March 2022. This is largely due to the pandemic lockdowns, etc.

Many of the courses offered are currently being made available for purchase at a discount to monthly members like myself and at a smaller discount (for a short period of time) to a la carte users of the site.

If you previously bought a course from that site, or if you think you might want to, you have until the end of March to download that course. Downloading can only be done to a laptop or desktop computer, not a mobile phone or a tablet.

Watercolor Color Wheels

| cathmary1030

I was playing with my new watercolor travel kit and made two color wheels — one Warm, one Cool. The Warm wheel was mixed from French Ultramarine, Cadmium Yellow and Cadmium Red (all Winsor-Newton). I love the orange, but the “purple” and “green” are unappealing. (This was done on 300 lb. paper.)

The Cool color wheel was made up of Winsor (Phthalo) Blue (Green Shade), Winsor Lemon and Alizarin Crimson. The “orange” is unappealing to me, but l love the vivid green. The purple is not too bad.

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.