Day 18: Daffodil

January 18, 2012

Daffodil, soft pastel on 8x10 pale yellow Sabretooth sanded paper

1. I used the Sofft tools to apply PanPastels to the paper after a brief sketch with a white Conte pencil.

2. I rarely use grays in a pastel, but in this instance, I used several tints of Payne's gray to build up the shadows on the petals and several greens to build the depth of the leaves and the interior of the flower's trumpet.

3. I continute building up the shadows and hues of the flower, still working solely with PanPastels.

4. Here I began stroking in some of the veining on the petals with a variety of PanPastel tints.

5. Now that the entire structure of the flower is built, I whipped out the white Conte pencil to firm up the points and highlights on the petals and a few sticks to manage some of the kinds of strokes that I just can't (yet) achieve with PanPastels.

6. I extended one of the large blade leaves up above the flower, and continued using pastel pencils to firm up the fringed edge of the trumpet closest to the viewer and add some veining to the interior of the trumpet.

7. Here I worked on some of the shadows and the structure of the trumpet.

8. My shadows were too harsh and too gray on the back petals, so I used a white PanPastel over the top, and did a little corrections on the interior of the trumpet. The flat background was just too flat for the piece, so I added some shades of the same color in a fanned structure to mimic the shadows that might be cast on a wall behing--and to add a little more energy to the piece.

Day 15: Moonscape abstract

From January 15, 2012

Moonscape, a soft pastel on 9x12 black Colourfix Suede

1. I sketched the moon, the focal tree, and the terrain in with a white Conte pencil.

2. This photo represents two layers of PanPastels applied primarily with the palette-knife-type Sofft tools. Using a limited palette that included white, yellow, turquoise, violet, tints of magenta and ultramarine, and a shade of violet, coupled with the white Conte pencil, vine charcoal, and a little bit of black Sharpie, I worked out today's simplified abstract composition.

3. I dabbled more blue into the sky using scumbline on the left half and light sketching between the tree branches. I finished the piece with a few touches of ultra light blues and purples in the snow and dark purples at the contour interfaces.