When in doubt....

Again the doubts plague my mind. I had decided on where I was taking my pastels, at least until I came to my next learning plateau and BOOM! doubt struck like a meteor in the night. Don't you just hate that. I'd planned to do more work with using Pan Pastels to tint drawings and to experiment with various papers to see which worked best with graphite and water soluble graphite. Then I just didn't know. I had done this before with Faber Castell water color pencils and the results were beautiful. Then I fell in with pastels and then Pan Pastels because of the stiffness in my fingers. But perhaps I should just go black and white. I love black and white.

Doubt and Ego had reared their ugly heads and confused me. So I did what any self respecting Reiki practitioner would do; I did a calibration (see Prelandra Ltd.) with my Reiki Grandmother, team I sent reiki to the problem and after allowing my mind to go all monkey the dust settled and I was back with my original inclination. So I have my next project set to go. I have my reference photo ready; a flock of Ibis have moved into my neighborhood so one of the juveniles is my subject. I am going to use Pastel Premier sanded paper and water soluble graphite pencils and tint with Pan Pastels using a limited ..

I'll let you know how it worked out in my next post. I hope it's beautiful. I know I can't use the Pastel Mat paper for this but other sanded papers have great possibilities. I've got lots of sanded paper as well as watercolor paper. I have everything I need.

On another note, I just finished my first Skill Share Class of 2022. The class that I'm teaching that is. This is a link to the class which includes one free month off the year's membership. 

https://www.skillshare.com/r/user/jmansson?gr_tch_ref=on

This is the project and it isn't available anywhere else.

If you can't afford Skillshare at this time, please keep in mind that I have different new videos on using Pan Pastels (some time lapse, some real time) regularly on my YouTube Channel. 

Around and around and ....

 In late 2019 I began working with Faber-Castell watercolor pencils. They are a beautiful medium. And I happened on a way of glazing with the pencils. Drawing the image in water soluble graphite, like a grisaille background and painting over the watercolor pencils and Derwent graphitint pencils. I even had an article in the February 2021 issue of  Colored Pencil Magazine.

Here are a few of the paintings I completed with this technique.

 You may still be able to get a back issue.  

Life happens and I found that even though this process made the colored pencil work faster, my fingers were being overstressed. Arthritis. So I switched to watercolor and tried other variations and went back and forth with soft pastels and Pan Pastels. Now grisaille is not a new method. It was used in the 14th and 15th centuries by Northern European artists. At first this was  a method of creating paintings that appeared to be stone reliefs. Then artists began using colored glazes over them and created a new method of oil painting. I learned this method way back in my college days when I majored in art at Jersey City State College. It can be done with shades of gray or browns or umbers or any color you want. The idea is to build the image using shades of a monochromatic base.

While researching the best papers to use for Pan Pastels, I saw a video demonstrating photo tinting using the pastels on mat photo paper. Cool, I thought. I can use that. So I printed out a drawing that I had done and painted it with Pan Pastels. This is the result and the original drawing.

What fun and what an interesting path before me. Finding the best papers, the best graphite for the paper, the best tools to apply the pastels. I'm planning a class for Skillshare using this method. All of my classes on Skillshare are devoted to Pan Pastels. 

What fun! My sister loved my portrait (above) and wanted a portrait of her and her dog, Brewster, so after some Photo Shop work I produced this piece.

So now, two and a half years later, I'm working with grisaille and tinting. I'll let you know how my work progresses and you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook. I share on both of those venues. My title? Around and Around and... Nothing is new under the sun and you never know when an old method will offer you a new opportunity to create.

Thanks for reading!

Ever get that feeling?

 Did you ever get that feeling that your art or whatever talents or skills are as good as they are going to get? Do you wonder why you keep watching art tutorials even though you're a professional artist? Have you noticed that your art is pretty much as good or better than most of the artists (working in your medium)? But do you still want to get better? I do. So I experiment. Experimenting. Trying new approaches. Keeping my fingers moving. 

I watch videos of other artists to discover new approaches, new media, and ideas to help me with my introductory art classes. I'm always checking to see if someone has a better idea than I do. I want to see if someone is handling pastels differently than I do. But now, I'm tired of watching other professionals' art demos. It's just time for me to recognize my own abilities. I'm good. I can be better. I can be not better. 

I make YouTube videos as well. I'm not putting them down. But the videos are for the folks who have something more to learn; beginning and intermediate students. Just like everyone else. I follow lots of professional artists and support them with a like and some watch time but I'm just not interested much except as a method of relaxation. That's why I watch old Bob Ross shows. Very relaxing. I know what he's doing and why. But his voice is so soothing. He was such a gentle man. A good teacher.

As I write this I have four videos ready for editing and uploading for my YouTube channel and my Library's Youtube channel. Maybe five. And I have my next Skillshare ust about project ready for recording. Yep. Teaching is what I do even as I create. I am so happy when I get a comment on a new technique I'm trying or my approach to a the medium. That's what I want to convey. And sometimes the new technique is just new to me and my students. Like drawing with a ballpoint pen. That's what I taught in last month's Library Adult Art Class on Zoom. It was fun. It's a great way to trust your drawing ability because you can't erase and white out looks yuckie.  

There are few artists on YouTube who draw magnificent images with a ballpoint pen. Just as fine as any graphite or charcoal masterpiece. Check it out sometime; search for "drawing with a ballpoint pen". And if you haven't and want to see what I do, check out my YouTube Channel.