Playing with Pastels (WARNING: large file size)(Update 14/11 with self portrait)

veryweirdguy · Sat 13/11/2004 14:21:04

For my current Art & Design course, I need to use as many different types of medium as I can to get a good mark. Before this year, I was only really used to pencils, paints & cahlk/charcoal, to some extent, so I have been advised to give pastels a shot. Here's my first attempt at using them:

Took me about an hour, did that.

It's hard to scan, in that it doesn't look exactly like it does in life, but that can't be helped.

What I want to know is: Am I heading in the right direction here?

I know there are a couple of problems with the shape of the bottle, the neck is too short & it's not quite symmetrical, but what I would really like crits on is how I can improve future pastel sketches - I hope to have another shot tomorrow. Please, tear this apart, I want to get better at it. I am of course going to talk to my teacher about it, but it's always nice to have different people's opinions on different techniques.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Scroll down for my second attempt using pastels.

stuh505 · Sat 13/11/2004 17:16:27

Not bad. Some bright white highlights would help a lot (but don't overdo it). Also, I would like to see the bottle picking up some of the color from the table.

Evil · Sun 14/11/2004 05:25:13

I love the overall style of this, VWG. It's got sort of an abstract feel to it. Color plays a major role in your style and you really use it well. However I would like to see more use of color theory.

For an example, your light source is a yellow. So, your shadows are going to have a bit more blue in them, and your highlights will have a bit of orange in them.

You might wanna try doing another still life with several objects. I would use a good dozen. The sketchiness of it might give some great results for larger images.

BOYD1981 · Sun 14/11/2004 09:41:17

you should try using smudging to blend colours and sharp lines.
i like to work with pastels but haven't done anything for a while, and when i do it's pretty abstract, unfortunately i don't have anything scanned on this pc so i can't give an exampl.
nice pic btw...

veryweirdguy · Sun 14/11/2004 11:36:01

Thanks for replying guys.

stuh: I tried to put in some bright highlights, & part of this is lost in scanning (they look rather blue) but I see what you mean about the bottle picking up some of the table colour. I'll try to incorperate this in future attempts.

Evil: I hadn't really thought about colour here - I wanted to just experiment with the medium first. Thanks, I shall think about colour theory in the future. I guess I just wanted to start simple, I need a base point to move out from.

Boyd: I think this is all about experimentation, so yeah, I shall look at different ways of using the pastels.

And now for something completely different:

That's me, in pastel form.

I have noticed that when scanning a pastel sketch you lose a lot of the texture, something that is very important with this medium. Also, here I tried brightening it a bit in Photoshop because my scanner seems to make it awfully dark, so the whitish patches are a little brighter here than they are in the actual sketch. It's hard to get it to appear on screen exactly as it does off.

Also, light-source was a bright lamp front-rightish (that is, above his left eye, right of the pic as you look at it).

Still, please crit away, taking into account that I hadn't read your replies when I did this.

I've decided I quite like using pastels, I like the abstract feel that Evil & Boyd mentioned - I'll probably buy some of my own when I return these to my teacher. Before then, however, I believe I shall try a larger still-life, as Evil suggested.

Also, on a different matter: Should I just post links to these pics instead of showing them in-thread? I imagine they take ages to load for the 56kers...

Chicky · Sun 14/11/2004 12:19:35

The last is great VWG, but the chin is annoying me. It kinda dips upwards, where as it should bend downwards. Well imo anyway.

BOYD1981 · Sun 14/11/2004 18:52:18

perhaps that's what his chin really looks like...

stuh505 · Sun 14/11/2004 20:53:20

The chin is slightly exaggerated, but it is curving the right way and it doesn't detract from the picture.

most troubling is the eyes; usually the cornea will be partially hidden under the eyelid, it makes it look like he's bugging out to not do that.

also the nose is slanted.

other than that it looks very nice.