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Day 7. Took a long time on this one, but couldn’t get the colors to blend together accurately. I think it might eventually work, but would take tons of layers. Might just have to wait till I get new colors in the mail to get skin tone right. At least I got a bunch of experimental practice today. I feel my drawings are improving after watching a bunch of anatomy lessons yesterday and today, even though it is probably hard to tell from this image with the layers of color on top.Great work here. Work on making your core shadows more clear. How thick are they? Where are they? Where are they soft and where are they sharp? Give us a bit more and it will help clarify the form!
Thank you Joshua. I think my core shadows disappeared too much over many layers of blending. I’ll work on making sure they stay clear. Steve Huston says something like “Make sure you are a good enough draftsman so that you can rediscover your drawing when you lose it under the paint.” The problem I am having right now is that I’m not good enough yet to get my drawing back when I lose it under a bunch of layers. I guess that will come with time and practice. Painting with pastels is a lot harder than I anticipated when I started this challenge, but I am going to persevere, and hopefully by day 100 I’ll have figured it out a bit more.
Day 8. I set a mini- challenge for myself inside of my challenge, which was to get some brilliant highlights on the skin of my figure. I watched a bunch of Charles Hu oil painting today. I tried to apply that knowledge to oil pastels. I tried to blend and use a bunch of colors like he did. The problem with that for oil pastels is that they very quickly turn muddy. I do feel like the palm of the hand did achieve some of the light I was after, even though parts of this painting are far too muddy. I will try to apply what worked here in future paintings, and plan out my colors better. Also, still having a bit of trouble with losing my drawing, but I had a little more control today compared to yesterday.Would it help to take a photo of your under drawing so you can refer back to it if you do lose it under the layers of pastel? The highlights and shadows on the palm look good – great to see your progress. Could you use more shadow on the thumb side of the palm to curve the form away from the light? It’s interesting to see you using green in the skin tones. I’ve seen it before, but still can’t quite comprehend how to use it. Do you use it as a shadow colour? I noticed it in your Day 4 post and thought it was particularly effective in the shadows on her tummy. You’ll be flying by day 100!
Thank you Deborah. A photo probably would help. It seemed to help to have another foot I could look at on day 6. I will try that. The other problem is when I put down a bunch of color, I lose the detail of the form I had in my drawing. I usually still know what the drawing looks like underneath, I just can’t get it back. Basically, I just can’t get the forms to show back up in the right ways. It starts to look like a blob of color with no definition. I think oil painters just keep adding layers of light and shadow until it starts to look to look right again. It seems like this is a bit harder to do with oil pastels because I have less of a window for trial and error. Yeah, the shadows are still not right on this one. I lost some of them, and also had to go back over some of them with dark umber at the end, which is not ideal and doesn’t look blended. Yes, the green is supposed to be in the shadow. I saw a lot of green in the skin tone of the reference photo near the wrist. The problem with that was the green pastel was far too bright, and I had to keep putting in layers of white to try to mute it down. I’m still learning which pastels to use in which situations. Hopefully I’ll have it figured out by day 100. Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it🙂
Day 9. I feel like I made some improvement today. I watched a bunch of Hollis Dunlap’s painting and felt inspired to just experiment with colors and see what happens. This painting is still not as realistic as I would like, but I feel like there is some aesthetic qualities to this painting that are a step in the right direction. I also feel like I’m getting a little more control over the pastels, and they are less frustrating to work with. Still just trying to figure out the right color combinations are far as mixing goes. I feel like my underdrawings are continuing to get better(even though you can’t see them).
I really like this one and particularly your colour choices! Your handle on the shadows here are really improving and the colours are very interesting and evoke a sense of light and shadow, and with the yellows, of sunlight hitting the form. If I’m reading the posture correctly, I’d knock the left leg back further into shadow as it looks to be down below the object she’s sitting on and will be in a cast shadow. Very evocative. Great work!
Thank you Deborah. Yes, I think you are right about the leg. I still need to think more about where objects are on the ground and shadow placement. Your feedback is very helpful as usual. I will try to improve on that tomorrow 🙂
I second Deborah, I personally find it really challenging to pick out green orange and pink for skin color. It is bold yet it demonstrated the lighting situation so well!
Thank you Peihong. I really appreciate the feedback. I promised myself I’d take a lot of risks and really experiment with this challenge. I realize that a lot of times that will end in failure, but every so often I will get something right that I can use and develop as part of my style. 🙂
Day 10. Today, I decided to experiment with completely different materials. I usually work on 18 x 24 white pastel paper. Today I used 9 x 12 black pastel paper. I usually draw with jumbo compressed charcoal sticks. Today, I used a white conte crayon. I’ve been using Sennelier oil pastels since day 5. Today, I tried out Van Goghs. It was definitely an interesting experience. I can’t say that this work is perfect, but I do kind of like it, especially when I look at it from a distance. It does also look better in person. My iPad camera put too much of a flash on it. It was hard to get the details right this small, especially the face. Overall, I learned a lot today that I can apply to future works. I watched a great instructional video on pastel painting on YouTube by an artist named Jon Davies. Definitely worth checking out if you enjoy working with pastels.
Day 11. Having a tough day drawing. Started a few, and none of them were working. I decided to give up for today and just work on trying to get a chiaroscuro effect like Caravaggio using black paper. Here is my attempt. Needs a lot of work, but it was fun to experiment. The orange on the neck is unintentional because the pastels do not erase well on this paper. My camera puts to much of a flash on the black paper. Colors are yellow ochre, vermillion, burnt umber, and white.
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