Monday, March 30, 2009

My First Pastel

"Old copper kettle"
Pastel, 17" x 14"

Last week I started this drawing in my Monday class at University arts. I mentioned that I erred with the fixative and basically the picture turned all dark. My instructor told me I could continue over the fixative. Still lifes like this are not my favorite subjects, but we do a lot in class to practice our drawing skills. Lately, Bob has been introducing color. We start by drawing and blocking in the values in charcoal. Then we apply the pastels. You can see that the kettle is old, with blackened areas and some oxidization, which suggest a kettle with history. I really enjoyed doing this piece, and I plan to buy some pastels of my own.

3 comments:

JSuar said...

beautiful work. i like the colors and your work with light. nice work.

Mary Paquet said...

Jay, thanks for checking out my blog and my work. My drawing instructor does a great job teaching us how to render light and the other values to make it pop. I've learned a lot.

I left you a comment on yor Flickr account. I love your photographs!

JSuar said...

Mary, thank you for your compliments :) I will be checking on your work periodically so keep up the great work.