Today is the first day of Richard McKinley's workshop. For this workshop, I've decided to work in pastel. We spent the morning reviewing elements such as composition, value, color and plein air painting. Richard said something that really stuck in my mind. He said the human eye can see 80 different values. The camera can only see 20 different values. Thus the importance of working from life as much as possible. Its difficult when working in colored pencil but easier in pastel, oil or watercolor. This is my piece from this afternoon's plein air set up. I haven't worked in pastel for over a year (I shouldn't admit that!) so I am happy with what I accomplished today. I worked on Wallis board with a watercolor underpainting. I let the watercolor show through the pastel in some areas, I think it gives the piece more character. I love color so both my watercolor underpainting and pastel over it are bright and bold
This is the colored pencil & watercolor pencil class that I am teaching at the Portsmouth Arts Guild. The last two weeks, we've been combining both colored pencil and watercolor pencil but today's project was strictly colored pencil on Uart sanded 800 paper. They each picked a few shells and drew from a little still life set up. My students all love working on the Uart paper. We focused on color and value in the shells and shadows and they all did a great job rendering.
While out pasteling with my group on Tuesday, I met two nice ladies walking by. They started asking me about the group and then about me and my art. I explained I was primarily a colored pencilist and one lady was delighted and told me all about a local juried colored pencil exhibit. It turns out this exhibit is sponsored and put together by the Phoenix Chapter of CPSA. A little more investigation and I found that the exhibit was only about 1/2 mile away from our hotel. So we just had to go to the opening! Its a wonderful exhibition space in a beautiful park and the art itself is so inspiring!
