Shelley in watercolour and wax crayon

With a couple more pastels still to photograph,  I decided to end this month with a change of media. This is drawn with a fairly sharp black wax crayon from a 10-minute pose. Then I made a note of shadows and added the watercolour wash afterwards. I did the drawing on watercolour paper, planning to add the paint. I may check my paper supply - I'm on a binge of using up what is already in drawers- and do a few more wax crayon drawings on Life Drawing nights. I'm finding that drawing with coloured pencils- black and white- on grey paper only works at all if there is a 20-minute pose. Shorter than that, and I can't get enough down. I'm sort of hoarding the grey paper sketchbook and don't want to waste it if I can't use it to reasonable advantage. So, maybe I will switch media around from conte' for one and two-minute poses to something else for 5 minutes to wax crayon and penicl crayon. Could be fun.

More Shelley, more pastel

This is one  of Shelley done another day. I love the black stockings!  They make a nice  balance with the dark hair and the band on the mittens. I made the background behind the profile darker so that the profile would stand out.
The colour of the pastel paper worked well with the skin tones. Sometimes I like a skin-related colour like this one and sometimes a dark paper can work well. however, for the dark paper, it is often necessary to work some skin tones well into the paper first, then build up the layers of pastel. I quite enjoy working with pastels although I do not have the huge assortment of colours that a lot of pastel artists have. Too many could be too heavy to carry around- but I also think that it is possible to build layers and have a rich colour without having a very large amount of choice. I even wonder, sometimes, if being a little more limited doesn't make for more creative choices... sort of like painting acrylics with a limited palette which can result in unity as well as creative colour. Wednesday is "long pose" at Life Drawing (every second month) so I'll be taking my pastels and a choice of paper. Decision on paper colour will depend on the costume and set-up colours as well as the position I get. Position can determine the composition. The challenge is to make the most of where one sits or stands.

Back to pastels

This is from two weeks ago at Adrienne's with Shelley modelling. We have another session scheduled for tomorrow. I have a few pan pastels now. They are super-soft and applied with sponges. Make-up sponges work just fine. I find them very useful for a type of "underpainting". They fill the paper a bit and then other pastels can be worked over them - such as bringing in colour in the shadows. At Wednesday night Life Drawing, I was working in a new grey-toned sketchbook for the longer poses and drawing with black and white pencil crayons. I've also worked on a couple of acrylic paintings so I'm all over the board with various media- but that is part of the fun.

I think I'm getting the hang of Pinterest  - and just posted a new board with cat paintings and photos. However, I need to keep the art tools in action and not spend too much time at the keyboard.

Angelic Matreshkas

I'm starting the New Year with the "Peasant Angels " Matreshkas. The inside nesting dolls have wings painted on their backs but I made paper mache' wings for the outside doll. This is part of a plan for the new year of having a set of dolls in the kitchen window for a month at a time - except I won't do it in hot weather in case they react to being cooked in the sun.The peasant angels are my own design. I painted these in 1995 on "blanks" that I purchased. I still have a few more blanks. I haven't done any in a long time but I've  just started a new set- part of my plan to play in art.  After having Mrs. Santa Claus out for a Christmas decoration, I thought it would be fun to give the other hand-painted sets a turn. I had forgotten all the details of them so I'm seeing them anew. I would not have remembered when I painted them if I hadn't labeled them.

Some artists I know are making resolutions to paint a picture a day for 100 days but I'm not making resolutions for art or for otherwise.  I'm going to follow the suggestion of Rick Hanson of simply planning to nurture what makes me feel good. For me, that mostly means finding time for art but I'll do it in various ways, not a rigid plan. The nesting dolls should help in suggesting a relaxed and playful approach.  Another thing is to just let it go if it doesn't work out - one recent painting has turned out to be a write-off - or a paint-over in this case. It wasn't a  total disaster as there were more things I learned. Every painting is a learning experience after all. This one just didn't say what I wanted it to say - but then I had started another one (even while attempting to "fix" the unfixable) that is going in the direction that I want to head--- freer and yet more complicated too. I'm going to continue to work in different media too. I enjoy working in pastels for long poses in Life Drawing. I found myself thinking it might be fun to try pastels for plein-air work too - so I may try some when the weather gets right for outdoor art work.

Lanterns

This is the new lantern painting and it seems like this dark time of year is a good time to post it. The miner's lantern has been in two other paintings - and probably will be in others because it is interesting, I think. I added the camping lantern to this painting too. I wanted them both to be a little mysterious this time.  I quite like the "Japanese Lanterns" that seem to be getting more popular and more available every year - but I won't grow them in the garden as they are quite invasive. I got a nice bunch this year as they were being sold off after Hallowe'en  for only $1 with the store customer card. They came in a pot that I have used to stick cedar boughs, salal and re-twig dogwood for a door-side  Christmas display - with the dirt in the pot to keep things moist and weigh it down so it doesn't tip over.  A good deal- the lanterns and the pot too for $1.  Maybe I should call the painting "Bargain Lanterns" !  Maybe not a good idea- another artist I know had a painting of some flowers at a market and the painting included the market tag  "2 for $5". A viewer actually asked he if that was the price of the painting. Think I will just call this painting "Lanterns".

Better versions of Mrs. Claus

Apologies for the murkiness of the last photo- I think these are better.

Mrs.Santa Claus

I have a certain fondness for matreshkas and even have made some. Well, maybe not *made* since the blanks are sometimes available, but I have painted them.  The Christmas collected and "made"  ones are stored until the holiday season every year so it is nice to get them out and see them afresh. I have long suspected that Mrs.Santa Claus does a lot of the work while S.C. supervises the elves and the paperwork so, a few years ago, I painted a set of the nesting dolls to show some of her activities. The outside one has her baking gingerbread men, then she is making dolls, organizing stockings, putting up decorations, hanging lights, and wrapping gifts. I put this set in the kitchen window and now have decided that for 2014, I will give the various hand-painted ones a turn in the window.  Not through the summer, of course- I don't think the heat would do the paint any good.  In each case, I gessoed the blanks and painted them with acrylics and then used an acrylic varnish. The outside ones can have hats or extra texture that wouldn't work on the ones that have to nest inside. In this case the only texture is Mrs.Claus' curls.  Just another way to bring play into art....The 12 days of Christmas baubles did not make it onto the tree this year but I did post them all on the blog last December.