Snow

Sue Embrey watched a Zoom demo by Les Darlow on Thursday 29 Oct using Rowland Hilder’s watercolours as the subject for a pan pastel painting. She has used ordinary pastels and an ink pen on this and her own interpretation. It’s her first snow scene!!

 

Owl

Sue Murphy emailed about a week ago saying, "I’ve had a week away with no chance to paint so here’s a drawing from a couple of months back that I hope you’ll find interesting.  It is from a wonderful photograph taken by a friend, Philip Batty, with his permission.  I hope to do some more from a couple of other photos of the same owl. This is on black sketch paper, mixed media -  pastels, white marker pen and gel pen."

Painting and Stitching

Sue Embrey wrote, "I was able to spend 5 days at Malham in August in glorious weather! Painting plein air every day was great!" Here is a pastel painting she did.

Sue has also finished another needle project called a Marriage Pillowe, taken from a late 17th century original. Wool on linen in traditional crewel work

 

 

Reworked and revised

This is Sue Embrey's reworked buttercup heaven - "It’s so useful going back and revising and revising! One learns a lot!!!"

Holidays remembered

On the way to a holiday in Scotland Richard Hyde stopped overnight in a B&B in the Lake District. It was almost dark when he photographed the view of the distant mountains and the 'unreal' colour of the sky. The photo re-awoke memories of that magical moment and was the inspiration for this pastel painting.

Lake District Sunset

The second painting takes us into Scotland and shows the Solway Firth. Despite a heavy grey overcast all the light was in the sky and sea with the land appearing in silhouette.

Buttercup Meadow

This rather pleasant pastel painting by Sue Embrey shows a buttercup meadow near Ledbury

Rescued

When a painting doesn't work out as planned it may still be possible to make something of it.

Sue Embrey wasn't happy with this one

Sue describes what she did: "I brushed off the lower half of blues then sprayed with a little water and brushed in. I added an under colour before adding the wild daffodils. I used a little fixative in the process." Here's the result

Feather in Pastel

This pastel painting of a feather is by Nicole Willett.

Challenging Greens and Jacobean Crewel

Sue Embrey  wrote "... thought I’d share this as it was a real challenge to get the greens right. I had to keep thinking warm or cool! It’s a place called Chiltern in Victoria and it reminds me a little of the beech woods near High Wycombe. Fun to do!!  Pastel on mount card."

Chiltern, Victoria by Sue Embrey

Needlework is another of Sue's talents

Pastels

Three pastel paintings for you today: the first by Sue Embrey and then two by Richard Hyde.

Sue says, "Here's a quick warm up pastel using on of Karen Margulis' YouTube demos. Very useful to get you going after a break doing lots of embroidery! I used a mountcard offcut in a warm beige with an orange underpainting, Also used fixative to keep the shadows dark."

Sue Embrey - After Karen Margulis

Pastel and Pencil

Sue Embrey is a recent convert to pastel painting and yet has produced and exhibited some lovely pieces in a short period. This one of Manorbier was shown in an LAS exhibition last year and we had planned to use it in an advertising poster for this year's spring exhibition (The best laid plans ...)

Manorbier

Anyone using pastels or wanting to give them a try would benefit from visiting https://www.howtopastel.com/ If you scroll down the initial page you'll find a list of categories on the right which makes it easier to find your way around.

NOVEMBER DEMONSTRATION

November's demonstration was a return visit by Eric Watson   demonstrating animal painting in pastels. Eric worked mainly with pastel pencils and moved to coloured pencils for finer details towards the end. His favoured support is now Clairefontaine Pastelmat which has a smooth cork grain surface. Animal reference photos for artists are available online.

More information about Eric's work can be found on his website https://www.ericwatsonart.com/

Below are a few images from the demo.  Thanks to Eric for an excellent demo.

Showing the difference between pencil and pastel
Eye to the left in pencil
Eye to the right in pastel

Many colours in the eye

Background added after most of the snow leopard
has been painted

Some whiskers added

Tim Fisher demonstration

Tim Fisher

Tim gave us two demonstrations. The first and main one was using line, ink wash and soft pastel to paint a scene at the Yorkshire coastal village of Staithes. The second showed how to enhance a watercolour painting by applying softpastel.

Tim is a regular contributor to the Leisure Painter and is the author of several books published by Search Press. You can find out more about Tim's work and the painting breaks he offers by visiting his website www.timfisherartist.co.uk 

Tim based his demonstration on a photograph he had taken at Staithes. The support for his painting was Fisher400 Artpaper which is a sanded paper suitable for a range of media. This is availableUK from Jacksons Art Supplies and from in the www.proartpanels.com in the US.

Tim began with an ink line drawing using a long match stick to apply black FW acrylic ink. This has to be done with the support close to vertical to prevent ink blots on the support. The ink ran down over his fingers so the problems that would arise if working flat were fairly obvious!









The next stage looked a bit scary to start with as Tim applied washed of various brightly coloured acrylic inks across his drawing.

The images that follow show how the painting progressed

Eric Watson - animals in pastel

Members were invited to try some of the demonstrated
techniques on this picture

Eric is a self-taught artist from Bromsgrove and a full member of the International Wildlife Artists as a professional Artist. In his demonstration he show us how he uses light and shadow using a combination of pastel, pencil watercolour pencil and acrylic to build up from a base drawing to a finished creation of stunning detail.

Eric had brought along samples of his work and you can see more on his website http://www.ericwatsonart.com/  Some will remember Eric came to us in September 2013 and you can see images from that demonstration on this blog here

The demonstration picture this time was of a dog standing in water. He had tackled this subject before so he was able to show us a completed painting before taking us through the stages of development needed to achieve a similar result. He had brought along several pictures at various stages of completion so that he could show how each could be developed toward the next stage.

He first showed us how to transfer an image to paper using a grid and datum lines before moving on to a second stage picture which had some black pastel had already been applied. The paper is a heavy smooth general purpose paper with enough tooth to take pastel that he works well into the paper with a finger.

He usually waits until the animal image is about 85% complete before working on the background which he likes to keep fairly simple. If the main subject is dark the background is better kept light for contrast. A background applied first would pick up lots of dark pastel dust from the subject.

The edges of the dog image are drawn with pencil and not pastel. That means he can bring the background right up to the edge, even over the protruding fur, so there is no 'halo effect' around the subject.

Scrap paper is used to avoid smudging and should be discarded occasionally as it will pick up pastel on the back.

Valerie Briggs - Pastel demonstration

A misty start to the day

Valerie Briggs produced two different pastel paintings during her demonstration of atmospheric landscapes. 

Her first is shown on the left. Both this and the subsequent painting were produced without reference materials. She obviously has an excellent visual memory which, I'm sure, is the result of well developed observational skills.

Before starting she gave us some useful guidance on types of pastels and the various supports available and how well they held the pigment. It seems the "dreaded velour" sheds the pigment rather rapidly. The demonstrations were on Canson Mi-Teintes. Looking at the images of the second demo painting I can see that the right hand edge of the paper is lightly embossed with the brand name - probably not something you would want to show up in your work.

Marion Derrett: Pastel Landscape

Marion often takes photographs for reference, which she usually crops and then develops thumbnail sketches if she wishes to adjust the composition. She brought with her the photo and thumbnails for the landscape she demonstrated today and had also sketched the scene with charcoal on the sanded paper support she used.

She began by putting in the darkest values and then added various blues to the sky - darkest at the side from which the light came. Notice the purple on the underside of the clouds.

Christine Russell: Workshop - Still Life in Pastels

Workshop in progress

For our November workshop, held in the Memorial Hall at Wellington Heath, Christine Russell set up four different still lifes. That meant we had just three people painting each one with soft pastels. Christine began the session with a rapid but helpful demonstration to show how she would tackle one of them. We were advised to use a fairly abrasive paper or board and begin by using a pastel pencil for an initial drawing to establish the composition.

The pictures that follow show a few stages in her demonstration and are then followed by images showing what the workshop participants achieved. Many had little or no experience of pastel painting and yet the results for everyone were good.

Drawing using pastel pencil

Pascale Bigot - Musicians image

Pascale has now finished the pastel painting she began in our October demonstration. She has kindly sent us this image which is a detail from the painting.

Pascale Bigot - Musicians in Soft Pastel

Pascale is a French born artist who has lived in England for more than 20 years. She has developed her own techniques for soft pastel using strong colours and very contrasting tones, as can be seen in the detail where she is in the process of adding blacks and dark browns to provide contrast for the musician and keyboard. She is also beginning to add outlines for the figures.

To see more of her work visit her website www.pascalebigotart.com

Her supports are usually a white or ivory sandpaper which is not at all abrasive. I think it was Clairefontaine Pastelmat.

Composition is very important for her and she can spend hours sketching until she is happy with the composition. For this demonstration she brought with her a prepared drawing done with graphite pencil. This included blocking in some of the darker shapes and shadows with pencil. Pencil marks can be erased to make corrections to the drawing, something that is almost impossible with pastel. This was a technique she developed for the students she was teaching and now uses it herself.

The drawing can be seen to the right. The next step after fixing with extra hold hairspray, is to add a lightly applied layer of white pastel. This makes it much easier to blend colours which are added subsequently. Light colours are added first and then darker colours above. Blending is done with the fingers, working from light into dark. Smaller areas, such as the musicians' fingers, are blended using a colour shaper.

The images that follow show the work in progress. The painting was not completed at the end of the demonstration but Pascale has promised to send an image of the finished painting.

Pastel and painting workshops with illustrator David Brindley

I am including information about a workshop which, although it has nothing to do with Ledbury Art Society, is happening not too far away and it may be of interest to members.

Book in to a beginners workshop to learn techniques of blending, smudging and colour layering. Sessions are approximately 2 hours long and will be held from 10.30am on Friday mornings at RAFT Newent on the Market Square. Price per workshop £15 and includes light refreshment and all materials. Places are limited to 5 only so please book early to avoid disappointment. Telephone 01531 828280 or email info@raftclothing.co.uk. Start date to be confirmed soon.

All students will produce a still life of fruit for the first workshop.

If you would like to see some watercolours produced by David Brindley then take a look at http://originalwatercolourpaintings.com/#