Pastel Thursday #1

I had an itch to scratch when I got home: Dried Hydrangeas, 9 x 12, pastel on sanded paper.

My third formal painting class in fifty years, Painterly Pastels, kicked off with getting acquainted with the strange materials I've been collecting, since I signed up last August.

Over the last months, I had bought pastels from three different manufacturers: Nu pastels, Faber Castell and Rembrandt. I didn't go for the high-end stuff. I didn't know the difference between hard, (Nu), soft, (Castell), or medium, (Rembrandt). So I got three popular brands to see what's up?

A simple still life set up for a class of pastel novices. (Sorry the
photo is blurry; I had no where to brace myself as I zoomed in).

I didn't know what sanded paper was either--or why Wallis was so difficult to find, yet people complained about how expensive it was. All was explained. Papers were discussed. The benefit of Wallis sanded paper is it can be used many times over so it really isn't allthat expensive after all. The difference between oils and pastels is pastels are mixed on the support while oils are mixed using a palette. The two mediums, as I had suspected, complimented each other.

After the lecture and some hands-on trial basic value observations were made with our colors, Vianna gave an hour long demonstration. By the end of class, I couldn't wait to get home to try out my materials alone in my own space. After setting up a still life close to what Vianna put together, I spent an hour and a half on my first pastel painting on a professional surface with my variety of hardnesses.  What impressed me most was how sanded paper cut pastel dust down to near nothing making it well worth the expense. In addition of being reusable, sanded paper is wonderful with watercolors as long as you use cheap brushes. The sandy surface grates the hairs.

First order of business: select your palette beginning with the lightest value
you have among your colors. All other values are selected according to lightest value.

Vianna, working and talking us through her creative process, made me very itchy
to try my own hand.

At home, I found a pot with character and luckily had a couple of dried
Hydrangeas I hadn't used for fall flower arrangements. The sheets were a luck too--
two crib sheets left over from one of the grandkids visits. I guess I need to start
collecting still life materials?

And on my bar, once my watercolor station, my framing station, my everything-but-a-bar station, class
continued through my afternoon.  I loved the sanded paper. And the pastels I reached for the most were the Castells.
This medium may push me out of the house into plein air?