with the emphasis on “here”. I didn’t
really know what to say, “learning about
pastels?” seemed a bit too obvious a
reply. Luckily a couple of the artists in
the room had seen some of my work
in 2B graphite and vouched for me,
otherwise I think I would have been
out on my ear before the first class got
underway. I told her to just think of me
as a bone dry sponge and in five days
time I wanted to be dripping pastel
knowledge all over the floor as I left.
We had a laugh and away we went.
The course was a profound experience
for me on many levels. I’ll always
remember the feeling of rightness
(and relief) I got when one of the very
first things Barbara told us was the
only proper way to do a freehand
pastel no matter what the subject was
to “make an unholy mess and then
fix it”(figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6).
Same but Different
In a lot of ways I see pastels as an
extension of how I do my freehand
drawing in graphite including the way
I tone using a lot of fine hatching and
crosshatching. One of the main things
that attracted me to pastels in the
first place was the thought of being
able to lay layer upon layer of fine
crosshatching lines of various colours
on top of one another to suggest
colour rather than mixing paint on a
palette. Fudging and squirling (see
articles “Fudging and Squirling- parts
1, 2, 3, & 4”) are also perfectly suited
to my version of pastel drawing as
was the concept of starting with a
rough sketch and refining it more and
more as you went along, only instead
of squirling with a sharp pencil it’s a
blunt lump of pastel, and instead of
fudging with a clean eraser it’s with
your finger/ball of thumb/heel of hand/
knuckle etc(figures 7, 8, 9 & 10).Fig 5: As your layout becomes
more refined, more and more details
start to be added. By now you
should have chosen and settled
on around 6- 10 colours and be
sticking to them throughout. You’re
not served by trying to use all 200
in every work but by crikey it’s nice
to have a big mob to choose from
at the start of each new project.Fig 6: Finished freehand
work in pastel “Bee”.Fig 2 Fig 3Fig 5Fig 4Fig 6