Pastel Scribbler Sep2012

The Pastel Scribbler September 2012

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In this issue Editorial Scribble ...................................................................................................... 2 Get Dusty Challenge Results................................................................................... 3 Meet The Get Dusty Winner: Sharron Blackmore .................................................. 6 Sharron Shares Her Method For Painting Fur ........................................................ 9 How To Make New Pastels From Crumbs, Bits, Nubbins, And Dust................ .. 11

Cover i mage : Contemplation ,

Editorial Scribble

by Sharron Blackmore

It is lovely to see you all again after the summer holidays. In this issue, you meet Get Dusty winner Sharron Blackmore, who tells her story of how she stumbled into pastel painting.

The Scribbler Team

Painting fur has its challenges, and Sharron shows us a way to achieve that glossy or curly softness, by building on a basic coat of pastel with the correct values, on page 9.

The current team: Charlotte Herczfeld, edits, writes, does layout Ruth Mann, edits, writes, and proof-reads

I am generally more than happy leaving the messy job of making pastels to the experts who really know the tricky business of balancing binders and pigments. But there are a few times when I do some of the work: When I have collected lots of bits and crumbs from sticks, heaps of dust which has fallen off a painting, or when I want a “custom-mixed” stick to get a colour which is not in that brand’s range. Page 11.

Contact: [email protected]

May the dust be with you,

Charlotte Herczfeld

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Get Dusty Challenge Results The winner of the April challenge – Old Shoes – is Ryan Evans, UK. The prize is a set of 3 pastels from our new sponsor Henri Roché pastels, of La Maison du Pastel.

First place: Contemplation, by Sharron Blackmore (See cover for larger version.)

The Jury says: There is a wealth of wisdom in these eyes, natures own wisdom. The rendering of the fur and the bare skin on the ears are very well done. The warm orange in the fur is exactly the right amount to give the painting both warmth and stillness. The artist has used the background well by increasing contrast where the ‘action’ is (the face and eyes) and lowered contrast in areas which are of less importance, and makes good use of lost and found edges. The handling of the fur is excellent, particularly at the ridge which frames the face. The artist says one thing with the painting, and it is eloquent indeed. Very well done.

Second place: Magic Hour, by Eve Miller

The Jury says: The artist has chosen an extra long format, and balanced it well by letting the sky dominate and keeping the beautifully dark water and the land mass to a minimum. Bright and intense is balanced by darker muted colours. The layered colours give that extra glow to the sky.

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The Pastel Scribbler September 2012 Shared Third place: Water tank in the evening sun by Kerstin Birk

The Jury says: has conveyed the evening mood in a marvelous way. The pretty scenery with the evening sun is beautifully balanced by the obviously manmade water tank. The values are very well balanced. A good example of making a beautiful painting with an object regarded as rather ugly. Beauty is in the artist’s eye and hand.

Shared Third place: Green Striped, by Steffi Decker

The Jury says: The warm green in the apple in the midst of the cold green stripes in the cloth is so well handled. The wraps with its warm shadows give the painting interest and life. The artist has gone beyond the reference photo and added enlivening colours and reflected light to otherwise flat and murky areas. Excellent high realism.

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The Pastel Scribbler September 2012 Finalists

See larger images in the Summer 2012 Get Dusty Gallery

Embarrassed

Mad Man

by Jim Humphreys

by Ole Hedeager

The Jury says: A playful (!) approach where a loose handling makes a fine contrast to the geometrical elements. The apple as the only splash of colour really pops. When you want to give a strong and unambiguous message, a central placement of the area of interest is especially efficient. It is balanced by the light coming from the left gradating to darker at the right. There is just enough difference between left and right overall to give life to the painting. The notes are suggested just enough. This artist has taken a difficult subject and done well with it.

The Jury says: A very skilfully made portrait painted in sparse colours. The eyes penetrate your very soul and are even a bit scary. The different textures are painted successfully in this vignette, where the blurred edge at the chest area gives a good fading into the background. The light is handled very well.

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Meet the Get Dusty Winner: Sharron Blackmore Interviewed by Charlotte Herczfeld How did you get started in pastels? I hurt my foot while dog walking and was told to stay off my feet. Great....going on holiday with my husband and dogs and I was going to have to sit and twiddle my thumbs for a week. Well, to cut a short story shorter, that is how I started painting, and that was three years ago. I had tried in the past, several times but never with any success as I just didn't know what to do or for what reason. What changed? I do believe that you have to be in the right place at the right time and this was my right time, even if it was due to a painful injury. Pastel I had tried years ago but I now discovered pastel pencils and fell in love. I still use soft pastels and also harder square ones too.

http://www.abrushwithanimals.com

Being in the middle of building work, pastels were perfect to just pick up and put down when needed and I never wanted to use anything else. I picked up oils to learn more about colour mixing and effects and my work in both mediums are worked very similarly. Do you paint from life, or do you use reference material? What do you aim at capturing on paper? As 99% of my paintings are of animals and generally portrait type although not always, I have to use photos. I do work from the photos and crop on the computer for the best composition, so I rarely do thumbnails. My main focus is the expression and emotion of the animal. I am drawn to capturing what we think of as the fleeting thought passing through the animals mind. Backgrounds I only include if necessary, otherwise it detracts from the main area of focus and I want that focus firmly on the animal. I would rather create an atmospheric backdrop than a landscape, although I have done those too. Which papers do you prefer, what works best for your technique? I sometimes use Velour and also Fisher 400 and also Uart, but Pastelmat seems to be the one I use the most.

Far Away

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The Pastel Scribbler September 2012 You say you work from photos. What is the best way to view them, for painting purposes? My latest art toy is an iPad with an absolutely brilliant new high resolution screen. I can blow up parts of images if I need to and the colour on screen is absolutely stunning. No more trying to match those printers and photos or wasted ink and paper. I set it up on a table easel between my pastels and painting making it fairly easy to judge colours needed. You can see it in the photo, it is missing the iPad though as I took the photo with it. I take lots of photos throughout my paintings progress, I find it really helps to see the painting afresh and I often turn them into black &white along with the reference photo for comparison.

In the Forum of the Pastel Guild of Europe there was recently a discussion about how artists give titles to their works. Are titles important to your works?

Do you paint what you like, or do you take commissions, or both?

Titles are something which often just pop into my head. Contemplation took eighteen months waiting for a title, others have one before they are completed. I love to have a title before starting a painting but it doesn't always happen. It also gives me something to let my mind work on whilst the painting gets underway. It is in my mind from the selection of the reference.

I have already achieved so much in a fairly short time which started with winning the SAA 2011 June Atherton Award for best beginner. This year I had my little pastel cheetah cub selected as a runner up in the Animal & Wildlife section. I also submitted two paintings, one which was Contemplation to the

Can you say a bit about your working process? I always get the eyes in first and then I will start the background before I start the rest of the animal. I always go back and change anything that requires it so I don't worry about things been altered. That way I can work either in sections or over the whole piece at a time without the stress of a finished section that doesn't quite match up with what I want. I made a board with Velcro around the raised edges and a Mahl stick with Velcro so that I can work wherever I want on a painting and yet keep it from smudging, yet still have my wrist supported and both hands free.

Cheetah Cub

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The Pastel Scribbler September 2012 National Exhibition of Wildlife Artists which has a panel of five on the jury and not only were they both accepted, they both sold on the preview evening. I have had joint exhibitions and sold well too and also have gallery representation. I do accept commissions but I am very selective in what I pick. I must have an interest in the painting, it has to have something for me to grab hold of as money doesn't drive me, and it has to be something I

would want to paint. I have just completed a second racehorse for an owner so I must be doing something right, and I do admit that I do enjoy painting horses. What are your plans for the future? What next? Haven't got a clue, my art seems to have its own agenda and I am happy to go along with what it wants to do or be, I think I am happy just going along for the ride.

Ready to Launch

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Sharron shares her method for painting fur My method of working is methodical in a disorganised way.

I tend to block either a mid tone or dark under shadow in and then just push the pastel into the paper – normally with Pastelmat I use a colour shaper or my fingers. I drive the pastel in and then start building detail right from the beginning, always following the hair direction.

Looking for shadows, highlighted areas, stray hairs, curly , straight, frizzy, glossy, undercoat and topcoat. The gaps and chunks that can form, wet fur, dry fur, unkempt bits of hair. All of the underlying structure that builds depth. Look at it and understand how it is built layer upon layer with all of the colours that go to build those layers up.

Each layer will have many strokes and also colours finished by once again pushing the pastel into the paper. The layer beneath doesn't disappear, but it is slightly softened and muted. When it gets to the topmost layers I stop pushing the pastel into the paper and start what I call a twist and curl with a pencil or soft pastel.

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The Pastel Scribbler September 2012 Lay the pencil loosely between the thumb and first and second fingers, twisting the pencil and allowing the weight of the pencil to make the mark. You can get some wonderful stray and crinkling fur using this method as it doesn't disturb the underlayers at all. You can pull or push the pencil as you twist and turn the pastel, cutting in to parts that need defining.

In the pictures of the tiger you can see how each stage was built with random strokes layered and relayered with extra colours added by both glazing and individual strokes. If you use a printed reference then I suggest actually laying the pastel against it to judge the colours more accurately. It is surprising just how far away you can be without realising. You do get better at judging colours and it can be a good tester to see how accurate you are.

Serenity

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How to make new pastels from crumbs, bits, nubbins, and dust by Charlotte Herczfeld When what is left of a pastel stick is too small to hold, what do you do with it – do you throw it away, or do you save it? What about crumbs and the crushed remains of that stick that fell onto the concrete floor? Save them all, and make new pastels from them! Here is how you can do it. You will need some materials:             

A sheet of glass A single edge blade Plastic bags ( about 1 litre) Plastic gloves Plastic or wooden spoons A hammer A piece of cardboard Newspapers A tray A mask (don’t breathe in the pastel dust) An eyedropper A glass of distilled water A damp rag

I collect all small bits of pastel, and store them separated from each other by hue, but I do put all brands and all values into the same container, just to make life simple. When you paint, a lot of fine dust falls off the painting. You can collect that dust with a dust catcher under the lower edge of the painting and store in containers. This dust will give you neutrals.

Put the bits and ends into a plastic bag. Put the bag on some newspapers on a sturdy surface. Use the hammer to crush the pastel bits into powder. This powder will not be very fine, and that is OK.

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Then you have a choice of adding the water to the powdered pigment in the plastic bag (I do that for the fall-off dust, to avoid getting too much of it airborne), or pour the pigment out on the sheet of glass (for the more grainy dust crushed by hammer), make a hole in the middle of the heap and add water into the crater.

Take the spoon and knead the water and pigments into a paste. Add more water as needed – drop by drop – and take care to not over-saturate the mixture with water. Use the spoon to crush any remaining larger particles.

As the paste is smeared out on the glass, scrape it together with the single edge blade when needed. Also, when you need to clean the sheet of glass between colours, do start with scraping off the paste using the single edge blade, and then you can wipe off the remaining pigment with a wet rag.

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Knead the doughy paste with your fingers, and form into a roll in the palms of your hands. Cut the roll in bits.

Take each bit and roll them between your palms. A pastel stick can have any shape, so you could put these to dry.

If you want neater sticks, take that piece of cardboard and gently roll the clump of paste with the flat of it, on a newspaper. That will give you more uniform sticks.

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Put the sticks to dry on a newspaper on top of a tray. The tray provides stability so you can easily move the drying sticks. About three years of collecting crumbs and dust, and an afternoon’s work, gave me 37 new pastels. They are admittedly slightly more brittle than bought ones, but they work just fine.

This process is a bit messy. Change plastic bags and gloves often. Clean the sheet of glass, the spoons and the single edge blade between each colour.

From the neutral dust I got a good number of sticks which I made really thin, as I plan to use them for drawing the subject onto the pastel paper. Neutrals will not show up as bright edges. I also experimented with combining an ultramarine piece of a stick with a permanent rose, as I wanted to see if I could make a good vibrant violet. I found out that the ultramarine overpowers the permanent rose, but that it looks promising (leftmost short sticks, one is mixed with white). I will try again with different proportions.

In all, I’m getting good use out of about Euro 100 worth of bits and nubbins and dust. Extra tip: In a similar manner, you can save a dropped and crushed stick. Just take all the crumbs and dust, crush it even more, and add water and form into a new stick.

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Get Dusty and Apprentice Challenge Announcement Get Dusty September 2012: Category: Landscape Challenge: Interior "scape" Deadline: 25th September 2012 Get Dusty October 2012: Category: Portrait Challenge: A Portrait with a mood. Convey an emotion Deadline: 25th October 2012 Get Dusty November 2012: Category: Still Life Challenge: Set-up with complementary colours Deadline: 25th November 2012 The Apprentice Challenge has the same themes, only one month later. Remember, all members can participate in the Get Dusty, while no Journeyer is allowed to take part in the Apprentice Challenge. Questions? Log in and ask in the Forum.

Recent discussions i n the member’s Forum on the PGE website :

How to paint animals, How to paint trees, How to emphasise an aspect of a still -life and keep the supportive aspects in place, How to title landscapes and why, Help with peer critique – and much more! Log in and join in! _________________________________________________________________________________ © The Pastel Scribbler, and/or the author/artist/photographer All rights reserved, please contact The Pastel Scribbler for re-publishing rights

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Pastel Scribbler Sep2012

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