Back to the easel

Hell I've been doing a lot of drawings in the last two months. A tentative foray into graphite has resulted in a flood of drawings based on my Antarctic trip, both photos and memories. This has been cool, great fun and my drawing has improved beyond all recognition with all the practice.

Check this lot out:

Antarctic drawings

Lots more to come to, I have a folder of references and ideas that, no matter how many drawings I do, seems to still be growing. Enjoyable as all this pencil dust has been I have been missing my painting. Today I got back into my studio and started a full colour pastel painting...such a relief to be free of the constraints of graphite!

Here's progress to far, it's the bow of a wreck here in the Falklands; the Protector at New Island. I like the conflicting lines of the image, the planks of the hull/the remains of the copper sheathing/the streaks of rust from the hawsehole. This is 0n 50 X 70cm light grey pastel mat.

Extreme close up

I've been meaning for a while to do a series of pastels extreme close up images, not necessarily very small things but just a close look, the lichen on an old, weathered gate post, a rusty iron hinge, the feathers on a birds wing....that sort of thing. Some references will be photos that have been cropped to death, some will be still life, some macro photographs.

So I had a crack at one this evening, this is based on a photo of a rockhopper penguin, cropped until there's nothing except his eye and part of his beak and brow (I know I said I wouldn't do penguins but I've weakened).

For this I used mostly my conte (softish) pastels, just finished off the highlights & shadows with schminke pastels to get a bit more intensity. Support is 24 X 30 pastelmat in my favourite colour, anthracite. On the whole I don't blend much and in this painting I did none at all, also (and unusually for me) I didn't fix at all during the painting, bit of a departure for me this is.