Photo/s of the day.

[moonvoice]

Pastel Detail Shot






A person on my friends list has recently started experimenting with pastels, and then after we talked about it a bit, they asked me to put up or provide them some detail shots. I realised I didn't have any of my pastel works, so I decided - this morning - to attack my Wandsuna: Universal Language picture with my camera, and this is the results.





I only work in soft pastels (Schminke / Winsor Newton and some Rembrandts individual bought for colour), and Carbothello pastel pencils. It's not so much a choice not to work in hard pastels, as it is a financial compromise. To get the good soft pastels, I have not yet gotten good hard pastels to balance.





I use Mi Tientes paper, in the largest size available in Australia (just under A1, I believe), I rarely cut pastel paper down, but on the rare occasion I'll work on half or quarter sizes. The heaviest blending for this particular picture went into the sky, which had many different colours in it. Considering the base colour of the paper is dark red / brick brown, a lot of blending had to go in to pretty much eliminate that colour.





The circles in the foxes back were both Schminke and then magenta Carbothello. I don't work with fixative at the end of a picture, because fixative damages colour pigment (which is why pastels are so valuable so... uh, most pastel artists don't actually work with fixative when they're using the good stuff). BUT, I will use a small amount of fixative while working the piece. Fixative brings back the 'tooth' of the paper, and is the best way to add fine detail after blending, I find it even better than my trust malleable eraser.





Grass, tiny bit of the sleeve. Here you can see me using the tooth of the paper to my advantage. There is almost no blending in the upper colours on the grass stalks. I did the grass by laying down stalks and blending them in, and then laying down more textural upper colour with soft pastel and leaving it as is. It creates a rich texture in the foreground which tends to make things a bit more 'real' and less flat. Too much blending creates a flat piece, which can be great if that's what you're going for.





I love the clothing that the Wandsuna wear, and I invest a lot of time and thought into the colour choices and how gaudy I want them to look (or how not gaudy, in the case of Wandsuna: Soul). Here, I am using the colour of the paper to my advantage. The terracotta brown that separates the pleats is just plain paper. I've used eraser to bring it out, but it adds a nice contrast to the green/purple pleats in particular. Picking the right colour pastel paper makes or breaks a pastel piece; every time.





The foxes were difficult, but a lot of fun, too. Pulling out my brightest reds (you know the ones, the ones that say 'don't ever get this on clothing that you value because it will NEVER go away, when Schminke says 'this shit doesn't fade, yo,' THAT SHIT CANNOT BE WASHED OUT OF YOUR CLOTHING. Heh.) As a result, those foxes just go 'HI, WE DOMINATE THIS PICTURE.' And they do. Which is cool. There is no increase in saturation or contrast on that image. That is really how bright the colours are.





I used the colour of the paper a lot in the swampy/moory background, to indicate shadow. So I deliberately didn't blend this much, and even lifted some colour off with eraser. Then, to add texture, I selected about four colours that I'd been using on the costume, and used them to create individual glimmers or waves of grass picking up the moonlight (which some people think is sunlight, but was always intended to be moonlight, so...whoops?)

If I was using paper with no tooth, or little tooth (like cartridge), I wouldn't be able to achieve this affect at all.





The parts are the sum of the whole. You can actually see, here, that in the grass textures in the midground / background I've added magenta highlights. Grass isn't magenta, highlights aren't magenta, but that's the way I roll. The fact is, the most unexpected colours turn up in nature, and even when they don't, the most unexpected colours complete a piece. Working with crazy, and sometimes even incompatible colour schemes, is one of my favourite things in the whole world. And pastels really really lend themselves well to this.





Questions? Comments? Go for it!

Comments

Omygosh!

[stone-bitch.livejournal.com]

Wow!

That red is... stunning! I can't take my eyes off of it! I can't decide if the face is a mirror or the full moon.

Really, every time I see your work I'm just awestruck!

Re: Omygosh!

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

The red really is amazing. And it gets into everything. Heh.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

This piece is one of my favorites, and I think all of the detail shots make great compositions, too.

Those detail shots are amazing - seeing the texture of the paper like that, with those intense colors. Some of them remind me of looking at a butterfly's wing under a magnifying lens. Going back and looking at them after reading the whole post, now I get why the color of the paper matters.

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

Going back and looking at them after reading the whole post, now I get why the color of the paper matters.

It's one of those things that is like so so important, and yet, most of the time the colour just - hopeflly - is being used to help the picture so much that it becomes a part of the artwork.

I love picking different coloured pastel paper. :D

[elnigma.livejournal.com]

I really liked seeing your details and explanations, your work is incredible

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)

[limiinal.livejournal.com]

So freakin' cool! Your artwork always stuns me with its beauty. :D

What do you use to blend the pastels? I know they say using your hand is bad because of the oil on your skin, but the few times I've tried pastels, using my fingers or palm always felt much more controlled than those weird little paper stumps.

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

I use the corners of my fingers (particularly the edge of my little finger), which don't secrete much oil/sweat anymore mainly due to callouses.

I don't like using tortillions (the paper stumps, even if it is one of my favourite words of all time).

But I won't use my hands if I've just been eating food, have exercised, showered etc. I wouldn't use my palms because of the oil factor. So it's... tips of fingers, and the side of my little finger. I won't even really use to pad of my fingers because of oil factor. Though I'll make exceptions.

[scarletwildfire.livejournal.com]

This is one of my favorites and I never knew so much went into it (including the paper color!) Just incredible.

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

Paper colour is heaps of fun! I love picking paper colours. :D

[darakat-ewr.livejournal.com]

Its good to see the details of this, I can see how much work you put into it. Its just so amazingly good.

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

*blush* Thank you. :)

[sabr.livejournal.com]

This particular image SPEAKS to me - just his tiny detail -



*edit* not the photo I posted originally, while that does speak to me, not on the same level. haha.

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

I'm quite partial to this detail shot too. The pleats were one of my favourite parts of the whole picture. Both to do, and then when they were finished. :D

[thoraofthenord.livejournal.com]

These are freaking *amazing.* Thank you so much for doing this! It helps so much for me to be able to study the close up strokes and techniques, especially on a piece I really love. And this one…gods, I need to save money and at least get a (giant) print. I think I feel a little differently every time I look at it. Always serene and soulful, but just a bit different every time.

I definitely need to loosen up in terms of working with the colors without blending every little bit. I'm just not used to letting go, which was always my painting prof's biggest critique of me. One time he literally took away all my brushes except for two: a huge one, and slightly less huge one, and told me to just let go and do something without fussing over and controlling every little thing. Haha. Anyway.

I also really need to get proper textured paper to learn to work with it. I guess, with most of the painting I did, I didn't have a base texture to get to work with. Slightly more texture with acrylic, but with oil (which I preferred), the under painting always really took care of the canvas' texture so by the time I was working on the main bits, it was smooth. Sure, I could have built up the surface more, but I never liked the look of that. I love how you use the texture of the paper throughout this whole thing. You're so right when you talked about blending the base of the grasses and using the texture for the stalks--it really does add so much. Almost more than the color and strokes themselves, you know? I also really like how the color works with the piece, and not just in the color lending to the un-touched bits, but that warm undertone does affect the whole mood of it.

Also, I must say, the "unexpected colors" of things in your pieces really make them for me. I honestly don't think they'd be as captivating as they are if you didn't do the things you do with colors.

I've heard that about fixative and the pigments. I guess…I don't know. I'm majorly paranoid, so, how much do your pieces smudge after you're done working on them? How do you store them to protect them? We did study (well, talk about) a painter who literally just left her stuff lay around until someone purchased it; she believed that the damage that happened to the piece was part of the end process, part of what made everything the way it was "supposed to be" or fit together or something. It's an interesting idea, and it's not like she dined on her pieces or spilled coffee on them or anything, but still.

The other thing I'm really bad at is just letting strokes do the work. What I mean is what you did with the highlighting orange on the red pleats of the costume, specifically at the bottom where you have the diagonal strokes of orange. It works so well because the mind fills it in and from a distance it doesn't really even matter; looking at the whole piece you can't even tell that the highlights on the pleated collar come from those few, little strokes. Again, I just need to "let go" and let the small stuff be big. (Why is that so hard? lol)

All right, two (silly-ish) questions:
First, and maybe you can't even answer this, how much pastel do you go through for a piece like this? Take that main, mossy-stone green, for example, or the red. Do you wind up buying whole sticks for each painting? I'm sure you do, and that's obviously fine, but I'm just curious.
Secondly, would it be all right if I made a copy of this post to take notes on? I could leave out the finished piece or whatever you wanted. And I'd literally be like writing *on* everything and circling it and generally making it college-like and ugly. XD

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

I don't go through many pastels, believe it or not, even on pieces these size. I don't go buy extra sticks (even though I may look for specific colours I don't have; but I haven't had to do that for a long time).

I haven't had to buy a new set of Winsor Newtons ever. The mossy green...probably took about an all-round millimetre off. The red took even less. I actually used to most colour in the creams and stuff in the moon and face; because I was working against the colour of the pastel paper. That probably took two millimetres off each colour.

so, how much do your pieces smudge after you're done working on them?

Not at all. I mean that Wandsuna picture has been under Glen's bed for months. It's had cats stomping on it and running across it. And I took all these photos today, so you can see how much 'damage' has happened. Aside from a few white specks of pastel dust on the Wandsuna head (which can be blown off), nothing's happened.

I protect the pieces with glassine, which is a non-porous paper. I firmly paperclip that to every side, and that prevents smudging. It's how I send them too - with the glassine. Some dust will come loose over time, but that's normal with pastel paintings, and can't be completely eliminated even with fixative.

I store them flat, stacked on top of each other, under Glen's bed. Thankfully Maybe has shown no interest in chewing paper (yet!).

I mean, they are fragile. A person couldn't come along and run their fingers across it without destroying it. But glassine protects the surface. It's good to tape the back too, because pastel paper can fall apart over time. Especially if it gets handled a lot.

Again, I just need to "let go" and let the small stuff be big.

My non-bio-grandfather was really good with some of that stuff. He was a realistic landscape artist, and taught me that even in the most photo-real paintings, the man in the distance will always be a couple of squiggles of colour, and not a tiny little detailed man. And in fact, what sometimes makes a painting photo-real, is the presence of textures, squiggles, blotches of colour. Our brains don't process in as much detail as our cameras do, so sometimes to actually make something 'really real,' you kind of have to draw things in a way that aren't actually realistically capturing detail at all.

It's fun to experiment with. :)

And of course it's alright for you to make a copy of this post! :)

[thoraofthenord.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. And rather encouraging. I went through a lot of acrylic paint with every piece I did, which weren't even that big or terribly involved. Granted, I preferred oil, which I didn't need a lot of per piece, but still, it would have been difficult to keep that going without much spending money. It makes sense now that you mention it that the creams/etc went faster with this one with the paper being darker, but hearing that even that wasn't terribly "taxing" on the stick is encouraging. =)

Wow. Judging by how "new" it still looked, I would have guessed you had some secret storage method. XD I'll make a note of the glassine, though; that'll be important to know hopefully. ;) Do you know, do other pastel artists support the paper other than tape it? Like mounting it with archival adhesive onto boards or anything? I really love working with canvas, so I might eventually try pastel primers on a low-coating basis to preserve the texture of the canvas and primer brush strokes. We'll see. I don't know what it is, but I just love stretching my own canvas and preparing it. I suppose it speaks to my overall love of ritual.

I did manage to find (for sure) one store that carries Mi-Teintes pads. Only in a 9x12 size, though, and they say "assorted colors" but don't indicate what colors exactly. There's another art store I like to go to, but they don't list any of their products online (so freaking annoying, especially since they're hard for me to get to; I might end up calling them). And then there's an "elite" (er, marked-up) art store, but their page is down or something. Anyway, I also need to look into pastel pencils. I don't need to get any yet, but the place I got the soft pastels at hardly had any, so I need to keep an eye out for them. Obviously if I get into the oils I wouldn't use them anyway. But we'll see. The more I work on that first image, the more I'm liking the soft pastels. I need to give them more time, which I would anyway, but still.

Yeah. I did learn a lot when I did my "Movement of Souls" acrylic piece, ( http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c102/ThoraoftheNord/Photoblog/MovementofSouls.jpg ), just in terms of being less photo-real without being less real. (If that makes sense, haha.) But, obviously, I'm a photographer first and foremost, so I definitely see things and think about things as a photographer.

[white9-fox.livejournal.com]

This break-down just makes it so much more awesome. I especially love the magenta highlights you've added, would have never noticed it otherwise.

I see new things every time I look at this and other wandsuna pieces.

[white9-fox.livejournal.com]

Though ironically, the foxes didn't dominate the picture until you did the close-up of them and mentioned that they did. It was the head that dominated originally when I saw it.

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

There's also bright cadmium yellow in the grass too. I got carried away. Lol. I would've let myself use every colour if I could have! :D

[ariestess]

That is a really gorgeous piece. And I really liked the description of your techniques. Very helpful.

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed the descriptions, too! :)

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

This makes me wish Australia was nearer, or that shipping were less bad. I've got a largeish box of soft pastels and I'm absolutely awful with them.

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

Awww, I am full up with pastels. They last me forever! I don't do pastel art nearly enough. Maybe you could do some creative pavement art with them? *grin*

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Could do. Right now they're in a wooden box, taunting me!

I think what may happen is that I'll start using them to do detail work on paintings. That could be kind of fantastic.

[silverjackal.livejournal.com]

I love these detail shots. They give one a wonderful appreciation for the intricacy of the whole. Better still would be seeing the original, but of course that's not always possible. I really love being able to see the grass close, and of course the foxes are spectacular. :)

Have you ever considered doing something in a pictograph style? By that I mean cave art (whether from this world or some other)? The red of the foxes made me think along those lines -- the firelight flickering off stone adorned with all manner of creatures. Heh. I understand completely if such a thing doesn't appeal to you, it's just where my mind went.

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried proper pictographs before, not with the totems. I've thought about it, but there are other artists out there doing it far better than I. *blush*

[silverjackal.livejournal.com]

Given how wonderful your personal art is, I'd say there's nothing to be embarrassed about that others do a different style in a manner that's more to your liking. It also speaks highly of you that you're able to rate your skills and give others credit for theirs. No shame, yes? In my experience such humility is the true mark of a person who understands their craft, whatever that may be.

Also do some of these artists have an online presence that you could recommend? I really like that sort of art, and would love to see some good examples.

[plantyhamchuk.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the write-up, very informative. Feel free to do this with other pieces, if you like :)

[moonvoice.livejournal.com]

Ooo, coolies. :)

[firehauke.livejournal.com]

A lot of things not covered by high school art class. And I have not been able to find decent technique books in the interim on pastels.

There's a lot to learn here, it is worth revisiting!

[cariadwen.livejournal.com]

I got on the pc this morning to check my mail before going to my art class in the school hall and saw this post of yours. Was I excited! Of course I was!

I loved our little taste of pastels a few weeks ago and loved blending the colours with my fingers on the paper. I just couldn't wait to get home to check this out.

Now my tutor is good (especially for all of £5 for 2 hours) but no where did he emapthise how important the background colour of the paper was. Or how it is OK to leave it showing. If I take nothing away with me from this post at all, I take those two things and can say I have learnt something important from you.

And the close ups are very educational by themselves.

Thank you, even if I don't ever get good enough to show other people you will have helped me express myself through this medium.

[donnalotus.livejournal.com]

I've always loved this piece when I've come across it in your posts (icons), and thanks for sharing your pastels techniques - I haven't really played with pastels but i'd like to learn one day :D