“Drawing with Big Lumps
of Colour- Part 1”
by Brett A. Jones2
B graphite will always be my
abiding obsession, but pastels
are right in there behind with a
simultaneously similar and altogether
different flavour and fascination for
me. Despite them being traditionally
regarded as a painting medium I’ve
only ever been able to see them as
big blunt lumps of colour that you
use to draw with instead of a needle
sharp pencil. In a lot of ways they
are not only a welcome break from
the ever deepening addiction to the
monochromatic 2B Lumographs
but also a chance to do a very
different kind of art with a different
set of parameters, not to mention200 colours to play with instead of
black and greyscale for a change.Old School Fool
While I see both graphite and pastels
as drawing mediums I also see them
as being at opposite ends of several
sliding scales. In a lot of ways I
am I guess what you could call ‘old
school’ in my compulsive way of
thinking, I always like (have) to keep
things both real and simple. With
my graphite this means all I use is
one grade of pencil, an eraser, and
a couple of knives to keep them
sharp and trimmed. With the pastels
all I am interested in using is a full
set of pastels (figure 1) and a stiff,
clean brush to scruff some pastel
back off the paper once the tooth
is gone. I don’t go in for pastel
pencils or blending tools or any
of the other multitudinous things
available nowadays to “help” the
artist. It’s just the way my strange
brain works, it’s already a constant
struggle in there to actually make
the millions of decisions necessary
to organise all the shapes, marks,
and proportional subtleties needed
to bring every original artwork to a
conclusion, without another whole
layer of equipment decisions to
make on top. I’d just sit there and
stare with my brain boiling like a
billy if I had to do the art while also
wondering if I should be using a
block of colour or a pastel pencil
at any one time. I try not to argue
with my brain about things like that,Fig 1: Sea of Pain basic pastel set. Well, except
for poor old Mars Violet and Indian Red which
just wouldn’t fit and have to share a drawer
with a large Polychromos pencil family.Fig 2: Sea of pain pastel easel. The design
automatically followed the usual tenets of massive
overkill that has served me so well. It’s so big I
had to build it in the studio on the kitchen floor. In
this image it’s slid up high enough to see the big
counterweight made of worn out boring bars and
other large lumps of steel hanging behind it. It’s a
big, heavy easel so I needed lots of counterweight
to balance it. The whole thing is heavy enough
and balanced enough to move up and down
with light pressure and stay where it’s put.Pencils Down