5th Week of Pastel Class

Setup - It always amazes me how lackluster a photo can be. The setup in the studio was full of reflected light and pizzazz. I guess that's why I'm an artist and not a photographer. I'm never able to capture the pizzazz in a photo. This really was like building a theater set, which is Deb's background. I'm really enjoying learning how to do this.

This is 11" x 14" on Belgian Mist Wallis sanded paper. The black is a combo of NuPastel and black Rembrandt pastels. These are harder than the Ludwigs that I usually use.

Constructing the Darks - What I have "constructed" is the core shadows and the cast shadows. I have seen artists write books about this but never quite understood it. It gives a whole new meaning to thumbnail sketches. In a thumbnail you are trying to see if the darks make a good design. If I had been doing thumbnail sketches on this group of objects, I could now move them around and do another "constructing the darks" and decide which design was more pleasing.

Laying in the Lights - My pot went a little wonkie, but is fixable. This is only the first layers of lights. What is left now (for next week's class) is to continue to layer and refine colors and shapes. My values on the lights of the onions is a little dark but I should be able to fix this as well.

Observations:

- In this method of painting, things are either in the light or the dark. Even though the background is black (see setup pic), the right side is in the light and therefore is not really a dark. Big lightbulb moment!!

- More time spent during the setup results in alot less uncertainty when you start painting.

- There are probably more observations but they are still floating around in the gray matter in my brain this morning.

Thanks for following my adventure!