“I’m a very intuitive artist,” says
Brammeld. “I may not even plan a
painting; I just like to start and see
what happens. This is what I mean by
experimental. I don’t work to a for-
mula. I’ll work away up until the point
when I’m not sure how to proceed, then
‘rest’ the picture and come back to it at
some point in the future. The hardest
thing is knowing when to stop.”
Brammeld uses white cartridge
paper for pastel, graphite, charcoal
and acrylic. His fingers work the
pastel into the paper and obliterate
any white paper. “I enjoy the physi-
cality of this in the same way that
I enjoy making sweeping gestural
marks. And I always stand at the
easel,” he says, “although this makesit extremely difficult when I’m doing
very detailed small branch work with
pastel pencils.”
The artist never uses very soft
pastels on paper, but his pastel
selection is varied: Faber-Castell
and Daler-Rowney are favorites, but
he also has some artisan handmade
pastels from France, Sennelier and
Unison, although he uses those more
sparingly. The pastels are, for the
most part, applied directly. “I don’t
typically use water with pastels,”
he says, “but I have recently done a
series of charcoal treescapes using
Derwent tinted graphite (see page 34)
in which I’ve used water to create
washes. I have to work hard to push
the graphite into the paper with myfingers. It’s very physical, but it’s
the way I work. I still use fixative
between layers and then continue.”
Recently he’s followed a different
route, one quite at odds with his
normal practice. He’s been working
on a series of small (9½x12½-inch)
works (see page 32). These are on
tinted, gritty pastel card—in contrast
to his usual choice of surface. “This is
one of the most difficult things I’ve
done as an artist,” he says. “Working
small with pastel, on a tinted card
with texture, meant I had to change
my entire way of working. They ended
up being colorful, looser works with
softer pastels and needed little fix-
ing. They were successful in terms of
sales. With the graphite works, some36 Pastel Journal JUNE 2019