Oh boy, I’m so very excited about these! You can’t beat a new pastel set. I’ve loved pastels since I was a little girl. The feel of them are so different than anything else. Each one with brilliant color and they can be manipulate in a variety of ways.
A Lovely Unveiling
I am so grateful to actually be able to get these. Quality tools always matter, they can make things easier or better. These pastel sticks are loaded with pigment, are easy to blend and just feel wonderful. So simple and yet so complicated. An unforgettable experience for me. I’ve always wanted such an extensive set.
New Works with a New Pastel Set
This is one of my first works with these new Sennelier Pastels. I started this particular piece a long time ago with some pastels that were not quite the best. The difference when I applied these pastels to the old drawing was unbelievable., they flowed like butter onto the paper. I had no problem getting the colors and brilliance I was shooting for. Now I understand the meaning of pastel “painting”.
Parrot
Do yourself a favor if you are in the market and give them a try. Sennelier 40 Half Pastel Boxed Set They have many different size sets with sets geared towards landscape or portrait painters, therefore I may be in the market soon for a plein air set. Like this one Sennelier Oil Pastel 36 Plein Air Wood Box.
A Soft and Dreamy Landscape
This piece was done with alcohol and a paint brush. I laid down where I wanted my colors and then pushed around the pigment. It was great fun and I can see myself doing more of these because I really like the look of this. I found it free and inspiring, without a doubt, these are the best I’ve ever used
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Aristotle
To purchase my art on a variety of cool things visit my other art stores.
One of my favorite art quotes is about having no fear, or creating with no fear. Stephen King has written so much as to become part of our collective consciousness. He has helped me to become better at creating, I repeat some of what he says like a personal mantra. While I used this for writing, it naturally went over to all my art. Picking up a book like this can help.
”You can approach the act… with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness or even despair – the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because… you want to change the world. Come to it anyway but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.” – Stephen King I am such a fan of his writing, that I have several quotes I like from him. Can’t tell you how many times I hear his voice in my head.
“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
“You can, you should, and if your brave enough to start, you will.”
“The most important things are the hardest things to say.”
“Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”
There are more things to consider besides my favorite art quotes, there is poetry and music.
Poetry
Maya Angelou is another person I love to remember with special quotes.
“I’ve learned that people forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love.”
Leonardo Da Vinci is also a favorite of mine, not just for his art, but that his creativity ran so deep. He was an engineer, a doer, blazing his own trail.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
“The smallest feline is a masterpiece.”
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
“You have unlimited power on this canvas – can literally move mountains.”
Whenever I get down I look for quotes to help lift me up, it thoughtfully and cheerfully changes my attitude. This gives me energy and a new beginning.
“Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.” – Frank Liszt
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
“For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.” – Wallace
“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van gogh
“ …the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – FDR
“Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.” Gospel according to Mathew
What are some of your favorite motivational quotes?
What wonderful inspiration these words are. I find myself meditating on these and others and it helps bring me peace, excitement and wonder at our world.
What do you listen to?
To purchase my art on a variety of cool things visit my other art stores.
My year in review is not really a year, it is more like 6 months since I have started my website. I have had an online presence on various social media sites and others like Redbubble and zazzle. therefore it will be interesting to look at this post in another 6 months. Maybe I should do a review every 6 months instead.
I continue to learn and experience new things at every corner, never getting bored. Making new friends in the art circle is absolutely essential to me and this helps a lot to avoid feeling alone. Sometimes being an artist can be isolating. It is great to have the help of peers to review my work. Old friends and new always seem to come up with great ideas and suggestions. Of course trying to get and keep a thick skin can be tough sometimes, but true friends help. They don’t tear me down, but bring me up, elevating my work in the process. Friends help teach me and I hope to discover more friends continuously.
I am happy with my progress although I wish it was faster and further along. Some progress is better than none. I certainly look forward to the future. This is partly due to the constant instant gratification we get from perusing the internet, but it is also due in part to the amount of finished pieces I have. In the future I wish to actually finish more of my pieces.
Organization
I did start the year being fairly organized and still make progress organizing more. I am hoping to make my online presence more noticeable, get more followers and learn how to wield that weapon. Making more posts on the various social platforms makes me realize I need to have more material to post.
My year in review causes me to post a picture here of an old transistor cabinet remade into an organizational tool for my tubes of paint and other odds and ends. It was exciting to be able to do this and I think it will be very useful. I can find out at a glance where each color is and what I may need to replace.
Going forward, I hope to have a larger online presence and maybe travel more. I do think travel is very good for an artist.
Why do you work in the medium you do? I was originally taught how to do oil paintings when I was young and I continue to learn. I found oils great for my lifestyle, I can come back to them after a day or more and they will be still workable. Studying a piece over days helps me to form an idea of what I want to do next changing the colors, lines and composition. Change is more easily accomplished. The medium allows for slower or faster drying times depending on the mix or additives put into it. Oils generally have deep rich colors and you can usually tell an oil from an acrylic. I really enjoy the creamy consistency and they way I can blend colors either on the palette or the canvas. Layering colors after they dry has a wonderful effect.
Painting Techniques and Styles
There are almost as many techniques as there are styles. Wet on wet or alla prima, palette knife, imprimatura, plein air, sfregazzi, sfumato, impasto or scumbling. Alla prima is a lot of fun and lends itself to plein air painting because it is usually completed in one session. Sgraffito is a technique where you can scratch through layers of paint exposing different colors underneath and adding texture at the same time. Sfumato is a technique of using very soft gradual transitions from light to dark. Leonardo Da Vinci has good examples of this. Impasto is thick paint applied that helps to catch light and shadows, sometimes built up for effect and usually done on stronger supports. Scumbling is speckled, broken color applied so color underneath shows through. This gives a painting a sense of depth and color variation.
This is an example of impasto.
This is an example of the scumbling technique.
Other Mediums
I have also always loved pastel chalks because of the light airy effects I can achieve. The colors can be bright and cheerful. Blending this powdery medium is a lot of fun as is layering. Softness is easily achieved and hard edges or lines are too. They are a bit messy though.
I have recently been exploring acrylics because of their fast drying times. I am hoping it will be a great new way for me to travel without wet oil painting when I do plein air. Oils have a habit of getting onto everything if you aren’t careful. It seems to travel where you don’t want it sometimes. Acrylic is more easily cleaned and water is safer and readily available. Other additives can be put into acrylics to affect the drying times and blending too.
Experimenting with oil pastels sounds like a lot of fun. I am excited that there is so much to learn and experience with my art questing.
Cyn
To purchase my art on a variety of cool things visit my other art stores.
It is super hard to pick just one piece of art. So, I will pick a series done by Monet. My favorite piece of art is not a single piece, that would be just too hard to choose. The Water Lilies series is about 250 pieces of the same topic. They are at different times of the year, in different light and show how so many paintings are naturally different from each other. The studies are something I aspire to be able to do. They are impressionistic and sometimes abstract, showing a great breadth of seeing and interpretation. The painted water is varied throughout the series. Attention to composition is important here, therefore leading to better understanding. Examples of edge work are shown here. Controlling color to show atmosphere is here as well.
He is one of my favorite artists and I study his work still. This series is attacked at a lot of different angles and seasons. I wish I had such a beautiful landscape on my property so I could do the same. I would probably be as obsessed as him.
As an artist I could not narrow down my favorite piece of art in this group because I cannot even nail down my favorite color. There seems to be something to see or discover in each new turn.
