ONLINE ART COURSE – BEGINNING A NEW MODULE – PASTEL PENCILS, AND MORE WONKY VEG
Colour at last!
It seems really strange to be embarking on colour, after the first three modules which were all monochrome – graphite, charcoal and ink pens with black watercolour. I really love working in monochrome and shall be interested to see how well I get on with colour, which has got to be more complicated as far as judging values goes.
I was hoping to be able to use my existing set of pastel pencils for this module, but when I got them out, the set was only 12 pencils and one of them was missing. I knew I would need more colours than this for the projects, so I immediately put in an order for the Faber Castel Pitt Pastel Pencil set which Phil, the teacher, recommended. Unfortunately this is not arriving until Friday week which means I can’t really get on with the work.
This is what I have got so far.
There is no black or dark grey in my set, so I pulled out an incomplete set of stick monochrome pastels that I’d received as a gift several years ago, to enable me to add darker values in the exercises. The black object above the craft knife is a rough surface for sharpening pencils to a point. The pastel pencils were given to me when I was in my teens so they are really ancient!! They felt a bit gritty to use, and I’m not sure if that is normal, or whether the ones on order are going to be better.
Since the first lesson was the usual “warm up exercises” which is to familiarise us with a new medium before launching into the projects proper, I didn’t think it would matter if I used the wrong colours. I had already bought the pastel paper pad Phil had recommended, so I made a start.
I deliberately kept all the exercises over to one side of the paper. When the new pastel pencils arrive, I shall redo these on the right-hand side, to familiarise myself with the feel of them, and how the colours blend together.
I bought some cheap fixative when we were doing the charcoal module, but this doesn’t seem to work very well, so I have ordered some Winsor & Newton fixative which was recommended by another online artist, and I am hoping this is going to perform better. Opinions are mixed regarding the use of fixative; many artists won’t touch it as they say it darkens the colours; they prefer to store their work carefully between layers of paper, or frame them, to protect them from smudging, but I really can’t be bothered with all that! After all, this is a course, and we are following projects which are not necessarily to be permanent “works of art” and I really hate smudgy media!
Having not enjoyed working with charcoal at all because it is so messy and smudgy, I am not sure how well I am going to get on with the pastels. We shall see. At least they don’t look dirty! Looking at the work my fellow-students have done on the private forum, I am impressed. Each time I see a new project, I think, “I’m never going to be able to do that – it looks far too difficult!” but in every case I have succeeded, so I am sure I shall be fine with this module, too. It’s good to explore all different media and at the end of the course I can decide which I want to work with and which I shall abandon. The most important aspect of this course is learning how to observe, and to recognise the importance of values and proportion, and this experience is essential, whatever medium you are working with.
More wonky veg!
Over the past year or so I have had quite a few different vegetables in a “conjoined twin” formation! I’ve never experienced this before, and wonder if there is something in the environment that is causing this weird phenomenon. You can see my other examples if you search for “conjoined twin vegetables.” My most recent one came up when I was making curried parsnip soup yesterday. I’d bought a bag of what Tesco calls “Perfectly Imperfect” vegetables – the wonky ones – normally I only need a single parsnip for a recipe, but for the soup I knew I would use a whole bag.
Here’s the weird one.
Peculiar, or what?
I also had a two-legged carrot this week! At least it only had one top.
I love wonky veg. It has character. Like interesting faces – asymmetrical faces, old faces – not perfect photoshopped models’ faces which look like dolls. Faces of people who have experienced life and have a story to tell.
On this subject, my hubby has just bought an absolutely gorgeous second-hand book – an annual celebrating 50 years of “Picture Post,” a magazine which ran during the first half of the 20th century. It is packed with wonderful photos, many of ordinary working people in poverty-stricken areas in the 1930s and 40s – beautiful, characterful faces and a lot of joy, too. Funnily enough, all the posh folk who were photographed looked a lot more miserable! Looking at the numerous photos of small children, I wonder what happened to them all – many would still be alive, now elderly. What stories they would have to tell. I am going to use some of these photos as references for drawings.
