I won't share any photos for this post. I took none. I was very disappointed in the project. Not the beautiful reference photo I created. Well, I'll share that photo.
I used Photo Shop to create this composition of three macaws, a parrot and a toucan. I have painted in portraits of all of these beautiful birds in a variety of media from oils to pastels.
What went wrong? I wasn't able to achieve the softness and the energy I had using the watercolor paper. I used a 12 x 16 sanded paper that I had used before but in the past, pencils were used over the pastels. For whatever reason, I wasn't able to get the images to build using just the Pan Pastels. I used brushes as well as Soft tools. It didn't matter. Having completed the macaws, I called it quits. Well, I tinkered with Toucan but something was missing. So I tossed it. I put all of my tools and colors away.
Sometime last night I decided I would use watercolor paper. This morning I pulled out a 22 x 30 inch sheet of watercolor paper and wow. I had to move everything off of my drafting board to accommodate the paper. I cut it down to 15 x 22 inches and pulled out all of materials. Yesterday I used a limited palette of blue, orange, green and the shades and tints as well as black and white. That was also part of the problem. I had lost the cohesiveness my primary color palette brought to the party. I haven't done a large pastel in decades and those were 19 x 22. I used soft pastels and they were beautiful. I amazed myself with how good they were but then I stopped using them and moved back to acrylics. Now I'm using pastels again.
This painting won't be done in under an hour. That's great. I do enjoy getting lost in the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment