Hi everyone!  I have had a request to show some paintings in progress.  Now I know that the person asking, is an oil painter, but what I am working on right now is a pastel.  It is a commission, which needs to be ready as  Christmas present, so I am focusing on it.

However, both pastel paintings and oil paintings have many similarities.  You wouldn’t think so, since one is a dry medium, and one a wet medium.  But, you paint with both of them in basically the same way.  In oils you usually work “thin to thick”, meaning you put thinner layers of oil paint onto you surface so it doesn’t just run off, if it is too thick.  You also create better luminosity, which I am so interested in.

With pastels, you work “hard to soft”.  Basically the same idea as for oils.  If you put a very soft pastel (pastels come in many, many different “levels” of hardnesses), on too heavily at the beginning of your painting, you fill up the “tooth”.  The tooth of your pastel surface (there are many, many of these too), is what holds the pastels onto the surface.  I like using sanded papers and boards.  Some I buy, some I make.

For this commission I am using a 11×14 Ampersand Pastel Board.  It has a gritty surface which holds the pastel well.  Since I will be shipping it unframed, I want it to be as rigid as possible.  More on shipping, and framing pastels later.  Let’s get to the actual painting.  I was given a photograph to work from, of a young woman riding an event horse.  Nice, a grey!!  Love those purples and blues you can use in greys!!

When painting, in any medium, you think in shapes, not objects.  A scary thought fo the commission owners!  But, in order for the objects to be meaningful, connect with the rest of the painting, they first must be painted, and seen, as shapes.

You also want to relate your darks to other darks, lights to other lights, dulls to other dulls, etc.  You want to know, through your “roadmap” of the sketch, and where your darks will be, where your lights will be, how to make certain areas become more focal points than others.  At the moment, I don’t like the jump in the background.  But, I am also not using my energy on it either.  It will resolve later.

But what I do want to know is where my dark shapes are, and the light ones.  In pastels, as in oils, you paint, generally, since we all know that in the end, there are no “Rules”.  The Art Police do not knock on our studio doors and tell you what to do, or not do.  But, there are things that will help the painting progress.  Starting with your darks first, keeping pastels put on lightly, and usually with harder pastels first, so as to not fill up the tooth of your paper or board.

I am using an Ampersand Pastel Board for this piece.  I use all sorts of surfaces for pastel paintings, but primarily they are all a sanded surface.  Also, just to be clear, my opinion of Fixatives, is not to use them, except as a help to darken an area, and add more tooth.  If you “fix” a pastel painting at the end, you dull down all those lovely pastel particles that glimmer.  Pastels are such beautiful pieces, that is why Degas’ and so many other pastelists from times past, their paintings still just glimmer.

Enjoy!  Peace.