It's Just a Name

To this day I don’t know what happened. I zigged when I should have zagged, or the earth shifted to the left, or maybe my studio is haunted. At any rate, 2 entire trays of pastel sticks leapt off the table and crashed to the floor. That would be maybe 250 pieces of pigment ranging from palest to darkest in blues, greens and violets.

Pre-earthquake

  Y’know those times when you are so stunned all you can do is gape like a fish?

As luck would have it, a friend had recently sold me the last of her high-quality stash of pastels, and I knew that someday, somehow they would be integrated into my already full trays. What better time than the moment I am ankle deep – literally – in sticks already strewn hither and yon?

Four days later…

I ask you: what color is “wode”? Where does “heliotrope” fit on the color wheel? Is “aerial yellow” yellow-er than “atmosphere”?  And what about “#106”? Is it warmer than, say, “B712”?

I'm an equal-opportunity pastel purchaser. Great American, Diane Townsend, Art Spectrum - if its the right color, I'll buy it.

Oil paints are mostly labeled according to a historical system using clarifying words like ultramarine blue. This is a warm blue, always a warmer than prussian blue, which is always a very cool blue. Always. Cadmium red is an established color that varies only slightly from brand to brand. It is red. 

Pastel sticks are numbered and named according to whomever owns the label. Is “dead head” warmer than “sinopia”?  P12 lighter than 782.10? Compare 106 to orange, please.

Would you buy a painting if you knew it were splattered with “dragon’s blood”?

Same color, different value. Or is it? 

Is it warmer than "purange"? For those of you who keep up with my meanderings, as it turns out, purange is most likely dead head. Or sinopia. Caput mortuum, maybe. One of those. 

At any rate, re-configuring several hundreds of sticks of color has opened my eyes to all kinds of possibilities.  Two weeks ago my hand would have grabbed a color out of habit. Now I scan new hues, intensities and combinations, (regardless of their name). 

2016 Patricia Scarborough Coming and Going  9.5x9.5 pastel

What started out as disaster has actually given me a bump in a new direction, and I like it. 

Still, would Ray Charles's masterpiece sound the same if it were "Am I Wode?" 

Painting Lesson

In a month or so I'll be teaching a pastel class for the Grand Island Sketch Club. I'm really honored to be asked to share with them because they're a group of dedicated and very talented artists. It occured to me that maybe you'd like in on the lesson.

This first shot shows how I arrange my pastel sticks. I made the trays out of fome-core board. The sticks are arranged by color family, and value.


The first step is to sketch out the "chunks", the big areas of value. I lay in a thin layer of pastel in a very dark value which represents the darkest part of the painting, and then rub in some red tones for the foreground. When that is done, I dip an old brush into rubbing alcohol and wash the pastel into the paper. (By the way, I'm using Art Spectrum sanded paper.) This allows the first layer to be very rich yet thin. Because it's melted into the surface I can go over the first layers with lots of lighter colors.

Now I work on the local, or "real" color. I'm slowly adding colors to suggest leaves and grass.

This close up shows how loose my strokes are. Lots of original layers show through. I'm not really worried about how accurate the colors of the grassy area are, or even whether it's actually grass. My interest lies in the energy I get from the scene. By letting some of the drips and dribbles of the alcohol wash show through, the area becomes really exciting.

This 9 x 12 piece is nearly done. There are some issues with the sky I need to resolve, and I'm not sure about that diagonal line through the foreground, but it's time for a break. I'll put it away for a couple of days and see what comes to mind with a fresh eye.

If you're interested in taking the October 13th class, let me know and I'll get you the details.