Leisure Painter — June 2017

Pastel

A

rtists sometimes need

justification for working from

photographs, but the late

London Group artist, Victor Kuell, and

sometime gold medallist in perspective

at the Royal College of Art, once asked

me whether I didn’t think that

Leonardo would have made use of a

camera if he could have had one. I’ve

heard that, after Degas died, glass-plate

photographs were discovered from

which he had obviously worked. And

it was only through the extensive stop-

motion work of photographer,

Eadweard Muybridge, in the late 1800s,

that the true nature of the movement

of humans and animals was revealed.

Anyway, a photograph is only a

starting point and can be misleading.

The camera doesn’t lie, but it doesn’t

always tell the truth either so you have

to put a lot of yourself into a painting.

When painting an active young child,

however, reference photos are vital.

Types of pastels

While a blob of paint can be diluted

to an infinite number of tints, in pastel

painting you sometimes need the

actual tint and most of the well-known

brands offer a wide range. Derwent

pastel pencils are available in a wide

range of tints and have the name of

the colour handily printed on the

pencil with a reference number and

a letter denoting its degree of tint.

For example, I have orange earth 73b

and 73d; the latter is a paler tint.

I have sorted my numerous pastels

into boxes of the same colours. This

saves having to hunt through mixed

boxes looking for a particular colour

and also enables me to make a quick

comparison between variations of the

same colour. I have, for instance, eight

tints of Daler-Rowney Vandyke brown

soft pastels. Even with a more modest

collection, it is worth doing this to

avoid distracting and time-consuming

interruptions while painting.

24 JUNE 2017 http://www.painters-online.co.uk

Part 1How to paint accurate and interesting portraits, using

tried-and-tested methods. From the materials he uses to taking accurate

measurements and transferring the image, Martin Ashshows the way

A true likeness

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

nHow to paint an accurate likeness

nKnow your materials

nPractise methods for measuring

and transferring an image

Aspects of Amy, oil on canvas, 35^12 ⁄x 251 ⁄ 2 in. (90x65cm). I decided to paint several

images of my part-Chinese young friend on one canvas over the course of a year.

The main figure is life-size and I added the vertical stripe to match Amy’s dress and

introduce a modern touch to my usual traditional treatment.

t

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