Today I signed up for Marla Baggetta’s “Pastels for the Serious Beginner” online, work-at-your-own-pace class. I’m definitely a beginner, and I’m serious to finally get busy using some of the pastels I have, in addition to my daily drawing.
While my ultimate goal is to paint portraits and human figures, I like Marla’s work, and have watched a few of her demos on YouTube.
I’ve been taking Rebecca de Mondenca’s pastel classes on arttutor.com, and this is some of my initial work from her class “A Beginner’s Guide to Pastels”.
I find I don’t care for the pastel paper that has the honeycomb look, although it can hold more pastel layering, given the “tooth” of the paper.
Most of these are from using the Dick Blick Artist’s Pastels (60 set), but the (finger) blended blues are Sennelier Landscape (30 set) pastels.
So the first course I took on arttutor.com was Drawing Essentials, taught by Phil Davies. Excellent course; I loved it. And I think what I most liked about it was having the video and the ability to watch the expert do something and then it started clicking for me.. whereas reading in drawing fundamentals books doesn’t always translate to my beginner mind.
The above images came from reference drawings provided in the Drawing Essentials course. I had never drawn a horse before, nor had I come anywhere close to successfully drawing draped fabric, as with the towel above.
I had never heard of ArtTutor.com, but recently discovered it via a YouTube video, after I was looking for an online grid tool to use on some of my photos. (I first learned of using grids in Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.) After browsing — and buying a drawing course — I decided to get the membership. It certainly appears that it might be easier for me to “get” some drawing fundamentals if I can watch a skilled artist do it.
We’ll see!
BetterLateThanNeverArt 