Pastel painting

Two Christmases ago, my husband got me art materials for Christmas.  I researched on what I would need for different art media -- pastel, watercolor, acrylic -- and came up with a shopping list.   Pencils, watercolors, watercolor brushes, watercolor paper, pastels, pastel paper, acrylic paints, acrylic paper, frames, an easel. In a huge factory style art shop in Dusseldorf, I stocked up on what I thought I would need.

Two years later, the art materials remained untouched -- my easel unused and holding an empty frame.

Finally, this October, I joined an art class on pastel, watercolor and acrylic painting -- and my art materials came out of hibernation.

The class was such that you could choose what media to work in, what to paint and the teacher would help you out with the execution.

Pastels

I decided to start out with pastels, as it seemed easier to handle.  Below is a photo of my pastel starting set with 15 colors.

We always think that we need loads of colors, but our teacher showed us how to work with just a few colors.  I guess most people know that there are just 3 primary colors -- red, yellow and blue -- and all colors are made from that.  From the combination of 2 primary colors, you can make a complementary color.  Red+yellow= orange, yellow+blue=green, blue+red= violet.

So our first exercise was to make a color wheel of the primary colors.

Notice that the center and left-bottom color wheel has a vibrant bright warm set of primary colors -- for these I used ultramarine blue, permanent red, and light yellow.  You see that the intermingling of these primary colors form the complementary colors violet, orange and green at the intersections of the primary colors.

On the upper right side is another color wheel with another set of 3 primary colors: burnt siena (as kind of red), yellow ocher (as a yellow) and again the ultramarine blue (as that was all I had in my pastel set).  This color wheel gives another flavor of colors -- my teacher pointed out that these colors could be used for more natural type of landscapes, like the beach or so.

In my set were another set of primaries-- as shown in the lower bottom color wheel -- pthalo blue, lemon yellow and again the permanent red (the only red I had in the set).

Basically, the point is that with a few pastels, you can actually make a wide range of colors!  The primary colors are the 3 basic colors, then from them comes the 3 other complementary colors and between them are shades and hues of other colors!  Another point is that you usually would match colors that feel the same so that your painting comes out as harmonious.  We see that the first set of 3 feels like warm colors, the nature colors are on the upper right, the cooler type colors on the lower right, and somehow they belong together.

Next lesson was how to come up with grey tones.  We were told not to use blacks, as the color is too strong in a picture. Instead, what one can do is to combine all the colors to make a grey, or basically, a primary color + a complementary color will give a grey tone, as we can see in the next plate.

Well, okay, my plate is not so nice, but the idea is somehow there.  The combination of 3 primary colors gives a grey/black tone -- i.e red, blue, yellow.  It follows then that a primary color + its complementary color would then also give a grey/black tone -- i.e. red + green (blue and yellow) = grey, yellow+violet(red and blue)= grey, and blue + orange(red+yellow).  I tested that by using a light yellow plus the violet blue pastel in my set, the blue plus the light orange in my set and the red plus the cinnabar green in my set. Again, you can come up with different greys depending on how much of each color you put. I tried putting one color first on top of the other, then the other way around, but my teacher said it really does not matter which one is first as you will come up with a grey.

On our first day, I painted the following pastel of a leaf.  Here it is. :-)

 Next pastel painting day, I redid my color wheels.  Here you see more of the complementary colors. Across the blue is its complement, orange. Across the yellow, is its complement, violet/purple.  Across the red is its complement, green.  On the left color wheel, a combination of the pure primary colors giving a warmer tone.  The right color wheel shows the more nature like colors (although a prussian blue would have been better here instead of the ultramarine blue).

I then painted this apple, which I finished after 2 classes.  Yup, it took me about 4 hours to come up with this picture.  I found it difficult to first, draw the apple, then second, put in all the colors, third, add the shadows, then fourth, put in a background.  It wasn't just red and yellow but all the shades in between!   Putting in shadows also meant thinking about where the light was coming from and what shadow it would cast.  Deciding on a background meant ensuring the major subject comes through.   For this painting,  I did not use any black at all. To get the greys, I used the technique of adding the complementary color on top of the primary -- so I added a green on top of red at the bottom edge of the apple to achieve the shadow effect.  More of the complementary color made it darker, almost black.  Again, our teacher cautioned against using a black (which I did not have in my pastel set anyway), and suggested using the complementary colors.  This was also a way to make the painting more harmonious looking, unified and together.  My teacher suggested the nice background of light ultramarine blue with touches of yellow ocher.  I would never have thought of that!  

I bought 3 more pastels to have a wider range of colors -- a carmine red, a prussian blue and a lighter yellow ochre which my teacher suggested would be good for a flesh tone.

From here, I decided to set aside my pastels for a while and venture a bit into watercolor.  Coming up next...