A Cowboy's Still Life (pastel painting, 10x12)This is my response to the Virtual Sketch Date challenge for May. The photo was of two girls at a hoedown and one of them was wearing a cowboy hat. I don't draw people very well and the idea is to be inspired and use the photo as a jumping off point.
My own cowboy hat ( a Shady Brady - very high tone in cowboy terms) looked quite alot like the hat the older girl was wearing. So I set myself up a still life with my boyfriend's old dirty work gloves on a chair in the living room. It was about 6PM and the light was coming through only a corner of the kitchen window and I slid the chair around until the light hit the objects in this incredible way. I took a reference photo of my own (to preserve the light effect) and then I sketched the still life.
Today I did my painting with Nupastel. And I remembered my first art love from high school - we had to reproduce a master's painting in a different medium. Someone had given me Conte Crayons and I used them to reproduce a Rembrandt and then used them to draw everything I could find until there was nothing left but stubs I couldn't hold and then I could never find pastels I liked as much. Now I have choice and I chose Nupastels - lovely smudgy but firm pastels - to try them out.
And I am extremely happy with the results. I like that there are three distinct textures in this piece (the wood, the hat and the gloves) and I thinkg I pulled them all off. I also think I pulled the lighting effect of the chair fading off into the shadow pretty darned well too. I don't mean to sound like I am bragging.... I've just been so.... disappointed in the work I've been doing lately and jealous of how wonderful everyone else's art looks. So I and just feeling genuinely overjoyed to have maed a piece of art that I am happy with to the bottom of my soul.
I think the trick here is that I just let myself go. Rather that working so hard and trying so hard I just let it come out of my hands and onto the paper. I was in some sort of zone that in colour is hard for me to get to... I could see the block of colour and then just blocked them in and fine tuned it to blend them. I wish it always fet this easy.
My new box of pastels rock. Whoo hoo!
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3 comments:
This picture rocks too girl!!! Whoo hoo!
This is just gorgeous! Is this soft pastel? I am just learning how to deal with this medium...
Sonia,
Thanks for you compliments. Yeah this is chalk pastel. Nupastel by itself. Some of the other drawings have some derwent chalk pastel worked into them too. From what I've read in magazines it's pretty common to use different types of pastels in the same drawing because the difference in hardness helps to give different effects. You'll love playing with the pastels. It is really very forgiving to play with. Much more forgiving that watercolour because it's opaque so you can "fix" mistakes butless than drawing with pencil because you can't erase. I'm in love with them.
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