An experiment - Horse in pastel on velour paper

One of my New Year art resolutions was to try new mediums so I had a rummage through my art stuff and found my set of 72 Derwent Pastel Pencil and eventually a pad of Hahnemuhle Velour Pastel paper. I do want to point out that pastels on velour is not an experiment for most pastel artists, it's just for me it's an experiment - the first time I've tried it! (So please bare that in mind anyone who is thinking of commissioning me to do a portrait, lol!)

So, in my usual manner I dived right in with a full body horse painting, (using a reference photograph posted on the Pet Portrait Forum by the very talented Stephanie Greaves). The first problem I came across was I couldn't use my usual grid method of drawing the outline of the image as I did have a vague recollection of it being difficult to erase on velour paper. This presented its own problems when my freehand sketch wasn't the best (I really should get more practice at that!) so I've ended up with some untidy lines but as I am planning on it having a background hopefully I will be able to cover them up.

The velour itself is wierd to draw on - it is, as one would expect, velvety, so like drawing on a fluffy surface. The pastel only seemed to 'stick' to the surface if held in a certain way, but I'm not sure if that was due to the paper, the pastels, or more likely, me.

I only have pastel pencils and because I have started off by simply blocking in the darker parts of the drawing, using the pencil over a large area made it blunt pretty quickly and I don't have a knife or a pastel sharpener. I did manage to sharpen the pencil with the normal sharpener I have but I do think I need to invest in a pastel sharpener for when I get to the detailed bits.

After starting the painting I went online to get some tips and discovered two different methods for transferring the initial outline to the velour - if this experiment is a success maybe I'll get a chance to try them out! And I learned that blue tack and masking tape both remove pastel from the paper - must get some of both of those as well! And something else I tried out, which was recomended by a pastel artist was to rub the pastel into the velour paper with clean kitchen towel to create a pastel base which then makes the rest of the painting easier.

So, my attempts. This is only the first step, I have posted the reference which I don't normally do, but maybe even if, for me, this experiment is a disaster, my findings may help someone else - even if only to show how not to do it!!

Reference photo:

1st step of my pastel painting:

I will post more steps as I work my way through this painting - as I said, please bare in mind, this is a first for me!

Back to the easel

It's time for me to knuckle down and really concentrate on my artwork. My long run of visitors is coming to an end after tommorrow night and my overtime at work is also slowing down, due to people being back off their holidays. It means I will have more time to myself again to work on my portraits.

I currently have one large graphite pet portrait of two dogs on my waiting list, so I will have plenty of time to work on other things whilst working on that. I am planning on working on some more ACEO's as well as completing a couple of graphite portraits I have been working on as 'portfolio' pieces. I am also going to knuckle down and practice the painting. I have got some fantastic books to work from and several ideas about how I want to go forward with my artwork and I think being able to produce realsitic paintings as well as drawings is going to be important.

Of course, anything new will be added here, so watch this space!

Brilliant new art book

I have just recently joined a book club that caters for artists. It's called Painting for Pleasure and is run by Reader's Union. My latest order arrived yesterday and one of the books I ordered is 'realism in watermedia' by Christopher Leeper. I find it hard to find art books that give instruction on how to paint in a realistic style. A lot of books out there give lots of advice on techniques but a lot of the artwork in the examples is very abstract, and I find it hard to adapt these techniques to produce realistic artwork. I've been looking for books that have step by step demos but also explains how the reader can acheive results in their own work. This book is one of them. It is written in a really nice, clear way and the text is accompanied by lots of photographs.

It has 7 chapters, and covers watercolour, acrylic and mixed media:

• basic materials
• plan values for impact
• painting from life
• painting from photographs
• watermedia techniques
• mixed media techniques
• step-by-step demonstrations

I very rarely read an art book and feel inspired to tackle some painting but this book has given some good advice and inspired me to have a go, so I will be good and work on my commissions tommorow, but I think I may tackle a painting at the weekend.

Siamese cat in Acrylic finished

I have finally completed my Siamese cat Acrylic painting today. As you know it was my first ever Acrylic painting. I learned the hard way about mixing enough of a colour - I had to do a second layer of the cream as I wanted to cover up some detail I was unhappy with but hadn't mixed enough so the second layer is too dark. I found the detail very hard to do, I just can't control a paint brush like I can a pencil. I was using a smaller brush than reccomended, but still couldn't get fine enough lines. I have posted the finished peice on the Pet Portraits forum I am a member of for some constructive criticism so I will let you know what comments I get from there. Here is stage 3 and then the final painting: