This is about 7-1/2" x 10" on very rough Saint-Armand Colours paper in a washed denim color (nice flecks in it, obviously hand mixed / hand made). I coated it with clear Colourfix primer. Then I started out with a big sloppy mess of an alcohol wash, washing in the (sort of) complementary colors to what I was intending for the finish layer.
Experiments with an alcohol wash underpainting, coloring a "print" of an old sketch, and a strange Art Deco color scheme plus eerie detached (sleeping?) floating-head subject, the later two attributes both ala Redon.
La Coquille Odilon Redon (22-1/2" x 22-3/4")
The painting sequence / process, from Professor Bob Rohm:
This was my best drawing from the Crash Course In Drawing class this past weekend, using a grid and transferring the layout from the photo. It's overall 18" x 24". Done with charcoal, Char-Kole, and chamois, paper towels, and erasers!
Here is a pastel paint-by-numbers piece, using one of my carborundum prints as a base drawing.
These are some sycamores below my window. As the season moves on I'll see more and more of the white bleached-bone skeleton. They say the best way to learn to draw trees is by careful observation. Maybe I'll make these my special study. Since they are quite handy.
This is part of the homework for the last session of the pastels class at the Smithsonian. I tried this same ceramic pot in a number of different colors on different surfaces/backgrounds. I liked this one the best. It happens to be (a) the actual color of the pot and (b) the first one I did. Lesson: Observe closely and then savor beginner's luck.
don't exist anymore) but his diverse and out-there-on-the-edge techniques are all fascinating and show the versatility and vitality of the medium.
Here is the sketch from yesterday's Intro to Pastels class. It was a very strange day outside, up to about 74º, wet, humid, and balmy. But with very dark clouds zipping around, interrupting the sunlight. (There was a tornado warning later in the afternoon!) Anyway, we got out again to paint and this session was in the Hirshhorn's Sculpture Garden. I was attracted to this black shiny wet slick tree and wanted to connect it with that equally slick black torso on the pedestal above.
This is one of the homework assignments from class. I have incorporated the critique suggestions from Professor Gobar, softening both the background and foreground. It looks so 3-D I can't get over it.
"Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Barack could run. Barack is running so our children can fly."
Week 3 of our Intro to Pastels class at the Smithsonian. The weather was less than ideal so we stayed in yet again and painted from photos brought by Michelle, the TA. I was lucky enough to find this cool pic of a Roman sculpted face. Very interestingly lit and nicely cropped. I should have used the orange-tinted paper, instead of the blue. What a waste of a good opportunity. Next time! And neither the right nor left sides are entirely "resolved" but oh well. I was afraid that further fiddling wouldn't help. (How do you know when a thing is finished? You just know.)
This began as a sort of tea-stained board. The pear color is the 'compliment' of that tea-colored surface. Blue-violet being the compliment of the drab ochre. Palette below. The four there in a row that all look black are actually various tints of a wonderful deep deep Terry Ludwig aubergine (technically a "violet"). Neat color!
Inspirational pears here.
One of the key elements in these exercises is knowing when to stop. Clearly an element that has yet to sink in with me. As you can see, the shadow is particularly worked nearly to death. Practice! Practice! This is about 8"x10" on Canson Mi-Teinte blue paper. I like the look of the bare paper edge when I take the masking tape off. It somehow brings the whole thing back to a baseline of some kind. It would work even better if some of the blue paper were peeping through. Better on rougher paper.
These are my two Mark Leach Raw Colours with Pastels knock-offs. (See pages 64 and 65.) Somehow mine aren't quite as raw as his.
The support for this is a very rough watercolor board that I prepared with a mixture of white Colourfix Primer mixed with some 100 grit carborundum. It was so rough that it ate pastel like Godzilla! It was great! (I have some finer carborundum which I will try as well.) You can see the grayish flecks of carborundum on the paper, which might be mitigated with some tinting of the primer.
This is 7"x10" on very rough watercolor paper that I coated with white 'Fine Tooth Colourfix Primer' and then toned with deeply pigmented watercolor. I put red under the green pears and green under the reddish background. I got so much into the layering that I ended up nearly smearing. I had to spray it with workable fixative often. The 'tooth' of the primer isn't as good as the that of the sandy papers. Maybe I will add more grit to the primer and see what that does.
The pastels learning curve is taking me for a ride. Pears rulz. I suppose.
I stopped at Monocacy National Battlefield on the way home from Libertytown yesterday and discovered an 'Encampment' event being held on the grounds of the Gambrill Mill section, which is my favorite part of the battlefield. There was a group of Confederate re-enactors and a group of Yankee re-enactors. The Yankee group did a nice artillery demonstration. There were only six of them, but it wasn't hard to imagine that same sound, but coming from a thousand guns. Pretty scary. 
Another variable is paper! Paper color is one choice and another is paper texture. The hue and value of the underlying color seems to be a key element in pastels (as it is in gouache!) and the texture of the paper coating has to do with how many layers of color you are able to lay down. The coated papers are like very fine sandpaper and they accept a lot of layers. And you can buy light colored coated paper and color it yourself, any color (or combination of colors) you want, with watercolor or acrylic washes.
Yesterday was the first session of my 7-week Figure Drawing in Varied Media class at the Art League. It's three hours every Saturday morning, led by Priscilla Treacy. It's a fairly large class, as these classes go, so I'm not sure how much individualized attention each of us will get. But oh well, I'll make sure that it will be fun.
Some folks on Metro last week. The tan paper on the left is the BFK again. I am obviously into those white gouache highlights. This is a page and a half scanned from my small everyday sketchbook.
Sketchcrawl June 2008! Once again, I am the only one to show up. But it's still fun. Above, on the right of the sketchbook page, is the view along the north side of the golden NMAI, with pinky-gray Air+Space in the background (with the top of Ad Astra, which means 'To The Stars', that spiky sculpture by Richard Lippold in front of Air+Space, popping up above the trees), as well as ye ole Washington Monument.
I enjoyed my weekend workshop at the Art League with Diane Tesler entitled Gouache for Field Studies & More. We spent all of the second day outside, painting scenes in Old Town. There were a few demos at the beginning, but we were pretty much on our own, with a little bit of individual critique, when and if Diane could catch up with us. It was very instructive just to get down to it and mess around.
Here is an experiment with Conté à Paris Pierre Noire charcoal pencil and watercolor. The charcoal is dark as the darkest night and smears really nicely. More experiments to come!
