Monday, March 9, 2009

Pasteling in Tucson

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

6 comments:

Kathy said...

Wow, Kendra! What a view! I can imagine cps would be difficult to use plein air because of time. Maybe you could use one of your pastels as a model for a cp done back in the studio? I do love the looseness you have with the pastels, though. How long are you in Arizona?

Anonymous said...

Nice, colorful interpretation of the view, Kendra. It doesn't look to me like the time away from pastels has hurt your abilities with the medium.

Kendra said...

I am enjoying the pastels and my instructor likes the work I'm doing. So that makes me feel like I'm making progress in pastel.

I'm here until Saturday morning. The weather is beautiful. Not missing the rain back home.

Toni James, CPSA - DesertWindsStudio.com said...

Hi Kendra! I was surfing blogs this morning and thought that old pick-up truck painting looked famliar lol... then as I scrolled down I realized so did the Mountain View with the pastel painting in front of it. I saw that... from Wes Hydes' facebook? Anyway very nicely done. It sounds like you enjoyed our CPSA DC show, I'm glad, and had a great time plein air too. Good for you... beautiful work.

Kendra said...
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Kendra said...

I am happy to have featured your work, Toni! Not familiar with Wes Hyde, will look him up. Thanks for the compliments!