Adventures in Pastel Painting

 Pastel #2; Katy on Tasha Tudor Day

Pastel #1; Study in Red

 Pastel #3; Grip

Pastel #4; Clay

It's been ages since I blogged.  I honestly can't remember what all happened in what order last year.  We had a lot of really not very nice things happen whilst I was attempting to make art and we are still trying to recover time lost half-way through this year. 

Nevertheless.  I hope to catch you up-to-date within the next week or two. 

So mid-last-year, I was invited to attend a workshop/art session on Wednesday nights at a local art gallery.  I wasn't feeling very inspired at the time due to the factors written above, so rather than bringing my watercolours, I brought along a very nice set of pastels I had bought years ago and had always been too afraid to actually use. 

My dear friend Jeanette Giroud, a skilled artist, helped me with my first attempt.  That was the little sketch of the red-headed boy with the red chicken Study in Red.  Obviously I had no idea what I was doing but I found the pastels extremely easy and intuitive to use and almost even relaxing.  Not being one of those people who finds art-making in the least bit soothing, this was quite a novelty to me, and the following week I did the little portrait of Katy, which I was very pleased with.  Then there was an art exhibition at Ellis House shortly after that, for which I did the larger painting, Grip, and also the painting Clay, which never made it to the exhibition at all due to it having sold before the exhibition started.

I have done one other pastel painting since then but I will save that for a future post. 

I will try to be better about posting!  It is hard to make art a priority, and I even tried to give it up altogether this year because my schedule is so tight with working, volunteering, and studying.  But I found I wasn't happy at all giving it up, and so I've decided to do the complete opposite and prioritize it instead.   I never know what to do with myself. :)

Queens Of The Back Yard

Queens Of The Back Yard

12x16, A3 

Sold

April and May were interesting months for me.  The kind of "interesting" that the old Chinese proverb curses its foes with.  I had two trips to the ER, hospitalization, many many trips to the doctor, a surgery, narrowly avoided another surgery, and massive amounts of antibiotics, the effects of which I am still recovering from in the middle of June.

But when I could, I did manage to get some things done.  One of them being this little chicken painting which was commissioned by my online friend Wammy.  You can read about how that all came about on her blog, here.

This painting was very involved and complicated, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  And more importantly, Wammy is thrilled with it.  I sorted through hundreds of her photos to choose ones that portrayed the personalities and some interesting poses of Wammy's beloved chickens.  I tried to match lighting (not too much directional sun, cloudy day, snow or no snow, etc) and perspective.  Wammy wanted the chicken coops in the picture too, so I needed to completely adjust the perspective on those little buildings so that I could get everyone and everything in the painting.  Wammy could tell you that I left a lot of details out! but with so many busy ladies, it could be a very overwhelming view, so I had to not put quite EVERYTHING in there.

I worked this painting completely backwards.  Everyone would tell you, work from large to small.  Big areas first, small areas and details after.  This is very good advice.  However, I did not follow it.  The reason being that I did not think I could paint a chicken.  So after spending about a week on just the layout and drawing, I picked the chicken I thought would be easiest (little blue-black Esthelle) and gave it a shot.

I was SO surprised that my first chicken looked like a chicken.  I wanted to shout the news from the rooftops, that I PAINTED A CHICKEN AND IT LOOKED LIKE A CHICKEN.  I posted it to all my friends on Facebook (believe me, I think everyone was sick of me and my chickens by the time this painting was finished).  I chose another chicken, and painted her and to my surprise, the second one worked out too!  They all worked better than I could possibly imagine, except for ONE which gave me a heap of trouble.  But I'm not going to tell you which one. ;)

So after all this incredibly detailed work on the chickens, I found myself needing to work in the background.  That is when the trouble started.  I must have reworked that background 20 times, adjusting colour and shadows and darks and lights and busyness and detail...I must have been >< this close to packing it in ten times.  But I did not think I could do all those chickens again so I had to work it out.

You can decide if it worked or not.  Wammy loves it, and I consider the whole thing a huge learning experience, very hard work, and quite an accomplishment at the end of the day.

The Exhibition

Rain Dancer, watercolour 2015 A3 (#4)

I had promised my friends at Ellis House that I would enter a painting in the next members' exhibition.  Unfortunately the entry date snuck up on me and, when I realized how soon I needed to have the painting in -- Easter weekend, which is already really busy at my house anyway -- I had a bit of a panic.  But I had promised, and figured why not try?

The theme of the exhibition was Water Rhythm (or similar).  Not really having a clue as to what that meant, I figured something watery would probably do it.  You can get away with a lot as a newbie.

So the same night I finished the previous painting, which was Good Friday, we went to the Good Friday evening service at church and then I came straight home and started looking for a subject to paint.  Painting one of my own kids wasn't a good idea because I already knew I couldn't put a price tag on one of those.  So I had a look online and found a sweet photo of a girl dancing in the rain with a creative commons license to use.

I asked some friends on facebook what they thought (love it!) and the general response to the photo was good, so I quickly drew it and started painting.

I knew what I wanted to do but I had no idea what order to do it in or what colours exactly to use.  Still had the wrong yellow ;)  I made sooooooooo many terrible mistakes and finally at around 2am I gave up.  I got out a huge mop brush and dunked it in the dirty paint water and swooshed it all over the painting.

Big grey-brown drips rolled down the painting, across the girl in the orange dress, onto my desk, everywhere.  I turned the painting the other way and did it again.  I didn't have any hope of salvaging this horrible painting.

Then I went to bed.

Next morning I got up and hubby said, "I really like your new painting!"  I snorted, thinking he was teasing me but when I looked at it, it was dried and it didn't look...all that bad.  I hadn't got a frame yet or anything so my time was really short for me to get something completed for that afternoon, and suddenly I thought I would just go with this painting.  See what happened.

 

I bought some mat board in a grey colour and a mat cutting set.  I got the frame at IKEA.  Somehow the mat and frame worked with the second mat I made to set off the poor painting and I couldn't say that it was all that horrible.

I put it in the exhibition.

It sold.

:) :) :)

And then after that, someone else wanted the same painting done again for them.  And several other people wanted other paintings done for them.  And just like that, I knew that I was actually an artist.

I can say more about that but to put it simply:  I believe an artist is someone who is able to translate ideas from one form (sometimes unable to be spoken) to another (possibly able to be seen or heard or felt).  Some people make pictures, and that's fine...but it's not the essence of art.  When someone connects emotionally with something you've drawn or made, that's art and you are an artist.  It doesn't really have anything to do with selling stuff -- but having people willingly part with money in order to own what they've connected with is a good indicator that you have made art.