Artists Back to Basics - Issue 6 Volume 3 2016

The main differences between graphite

and pastel (which I find fascinating)

is playing with all the colours instead

of greyscale, the ability and freedom

to easily draw and adjust the negative

spaces, the ability to lay light on top

of dark instead of leaving parts of

the paper blank to denote highlights,

and the intentional chaos of the early

stages of a pastel when you are

going right out of your way to “make

a mess” in order to establish all

important character and undertones

in the finished work. For me pastels

have got all the things I loved about

oil painting and none of the things

I hated about it. There’s no turps,

linseed oil, rags, containers, palettes,

jammed lids, dried out tubes, wasting

paint, cleaning up before you can walk

away, mixing colours, deteriorating

brushes, having to wait till the paint

dried before moving on, paint cracking,

fumes, etc, etc. Don’t get me wrong,

I really love oil painting (it will always

be the ‘smell’ of art for me), just not

all the endless ‘stuff’ that goes with

it. Pastels perfectly suit the ongoing

chronic pain my back presents me with

as I can work on it for a few minutes

or an hour, as soon as enough is

enough I just drop the pastels on the

shelf at the bottom of the easel and

slow moan to the bed. When I want

to start again I stagger over and sit

down (or stand up) at the easel and

pick up a pastel and am back where

I left off. It doesn’t matter if its five

minutes or a week later, nothing’s

changed in the materials or the work

in progress. Exactly like 2B graphite.

The best thing in common of all.

Holistic Logistics

Holding my arms up working at an

easel is a lot harder than working

on the graphite drawing board flat

on the drawing table but there’s no

getting around that one, as the pastel

dust has to be able to fall away from

your work as you go along. I built

my big easel with back pain in mind

though, it is infinitely and easily height

adjustable with some old clothesline

cable, a few pulleys and a big heavy

counterweight of old boring bars and

scrap steel allowing me to quickly

and easily slide the whole easel with

the work propped on it up or down

into whichever position from moment

to moment suits my back to its best

Fig 7, 8, & 9: Close up view of bits

of the plant the bee is beeing.

Fig 10: Close up of the bee, it took a

long time to get the reference image

for this pastel. Bees are right little

buggers to compositionally ‘arrange’.

Fig 11: I like pastels so tend to

collect them a bit but you really only

need half a dozen to make a start.

Fig 7

Fig 8

Pencils Down