Pastel Painting – Pastels Rock

I have to confess; I get caught up in the “news”! It’s a problem. There is just so much out there; so much to know. And it’s exhausting. In the past year, I have been saying that I just want to become Amish and church butter. I do love butter. But really, I feel stressed by tech; the constant changes and updates; researching the latest and greatest, and the “news.” Once, I decided to go on a news fast prior to a time change. You can imagine how that went. As I neglected my blog, I realized that I must take control of my time.

So, I started wondering, with all that is going on right now, does anyone really want to hear about somebody’s artist adventures? Then I decided that if I need to get away from it all, surely you do too! Self-talk can be so discouraging! I decided to keep on doing my thing; things that fill my soul. It could sound selfish, but when we are empty, what do we have to give?

I had another issue too. I had created an amazing piece, a larger piece, using Pastel Mat in the past, which is the next surface out of my sampler pack. I expected to recreate the same kind of magic that I had created before. Sadly, it didn’t quite happen. One of my issues is that I don’t like working on such small surfaces. All of the sample pieces are around 6”x 8”. But having worked with this surface before, there is still something about it that I find intriguing. I really haven’t decided if I love it or hate it. I have decided that I want to learn how to work with it. I carry notes in my head about what has worked for me in my previous attempts.

It is an amazing surface! It is incredibly smooth and yet it holds the pastel so well. Impressively, almost no pastel dust falls out. Maybe the issue is that I don’t feel like I can layer my colors much. Whatever it is, I feel determined to master this surface. This was my first attempt.

First Attempt with reddish/orange background

I was trying to work with a reddish/orange background. But I made a mistake. One of the rules for working with pastels is to work dark to light. Yes, rules are meant to be broken, but this one is kind of hard to fix if you don’t follow it. I didn’t do a good job of establishing my shadows. After staring at it for days – weeks actually, I brushed everything in with Turpenoid and started over.

This feels much better, more dramatic. And so I began again. And while not entirely happy with this piece, it could be because I worked over another painting and it had affected the surface, this experience has given me ideas to try on future paintings.