A Puzzlement

And I'm back to bird studies using only Pan Pastels but using lighter toned papers. The red and brown bird is a finch and the bright orange and black bird is an Oriole. These will both show up on you tube as hour long demonstrations. I guess demonstrations is the right word. Whole I some step-by-step tutorials on YouTube, most of my videos are sharing my process, telling you what I'm doing sometimes and just chatting. 

I do teach art as part of my job as a librarian but I'm not quite sure if that is what I'm doing on YouTube. With the past four the four videos I've been creating pastel paintings for about an hour just chatting  about art, my process and stuff. I'm enjoying editing as well. I'm just keeping bit simple and avoiding attempts to make my homemade videos to some how be professional. That was way too much work. 

This is a wild new age for everyone. We can make movies, write books, create art and music and share it on the net with absolutely no background in production. I'm just feeling my way through , sharing my paintings as I find my path. as of today I'm up to 187 subscribers. Its a far cry from many of the YouTubers I watch but I'm so pleased about them and grateful to them. One of my videos has over 2,000 views and I don't know what I did, if anything to make that happens. I think I'm paraphrasing b the king from Anna and the King when I say "tis a puzzlement."

 

Portrait of Axle

 First there is the portrait of the mystery Aussie, a dog in the car ahead of me in the take out line of a Dunkin Donut store. I couldn't resist her. Well, I think the Aussie is a she. She caught me looking at her and ducked into the car and peeked out at me again and I took the shot.  This piece is done with Pan Pastels on black paper and as I declared in my last post, no pastel pencils save a white and a black pencil.  This is much more in keeping with the more relaxed, more organic style I have been evolving. I'm not concerned with photorealism, or tricking folks into thinking this is a photo. I'm interested in the light and the color and the emotion of the moment. Sadly, I forgot to hit record when I began working on this portrait. That's not so unusual. I just want to paint or draw or whatever I'm doing here. 

Now, I really wanted to do a portrait of Axle, a pitt mix who was a good friend to me when I moved to Georgia. He lived across the road from me and came to walk with me every morning before I went to work and who joined me every evening when I came home. Sadly, he died an early death when he was struck by a car he was chasing. This is one of many photos I took of Axle.  

Here he is. I did remember to press record this time. It's the first time I used my phone to record the video and if you click on the image or the word video, you can see it. The video is just under an hour.  

Axle belonged to neighbors who lived across the dirt road from me when I was living in south Georgia. He was friendly and playful and mischievous. He stole things like the door mat in my garage and my friend's swim trunks. Finally I have him his own toy and he brought it to my house. I rented a house on four acres with few neighbors and for exercise I walked them twice a day. Axle walked them with me.  He and a brother were found in a trash container and adopted by my neighbor. His brother ran away and the owners never knew what became of him. They tried to keep Axle contained but he just cried and howled so they let him roam. He never went far. He was only about two years old when he passed away and, although it's been a decade, he is sorely missed.  

I know that Pitt Bulls and Pitt mixes are feared and legislated again and with some reason. But while he looked more Pitt than the lab he was mixed with, he was more lab. He had a soft mouth. When he took my hand in his mouth he held it as softly as you would hold a child. He was a playful dog and a loving dog and he enjoyed the Milk Bones I kept on hand for him. As rough as his beginning was, Axle was pure joy.

Why I just gave up Pastel Pencils

 Trying to sharpen my pastel pencils has become a nightmare. Well a bad dream at any rate as I break points over and again. The best way, I suppose is to sharpen them with a blade but that that's a long time and is difficult for me. Then I remembered my Prismacolor Pastels. Hard and easily sharpened on a sanding block if needed. Fine squared edges. I had them and never used them. Not since I was in college or there abouts. 

I packed away the pencils and time will tell if they make their way to Good Will or back to my drawing board. I do most of my work with Pan Pastels, trying to keep the use of pencils to a minimum. I kept the black and the white a few colors that I frequently use in detailing but the rest are boxed away. The NuPastels give off less dust than soft pastels and no more than the pencils. 

I feel so much better. Tomorrow I hope to start a new project. Work today. Appointments tomorrow AM and tomorrow AM and tomorrow AM. Life does get in the way of my creative process. 

It's a process!

 And I love it!. This is the painting I created from Pan Pastels and just a few pastel pencils. Because of the architecture, the bird house, I used the grid method to be sure all proportions were correct. 

The video is available for your viewing pleasure. Just click here: Birds at the Feeder

Its really two time lapse videos; one of the drawing and one of  the painting.

This is the drawing I created from the following very poor photographs of our bird feeder. However, having done aa many portraits and studies of birds as I have, it was no effort to create an accurate depiction of the Bluejay and the Woodpecker.

My next move was to grid the original drawing. Now this drawing was for composition purposes only. It was by no means meant to be a fine art drawing. I used one inch grids on both the drawing and the painting.

You can still see a few of the grid lines in the drawing on the black paper. I drew with white pastel pencil.

This is my final piece. I am pleased. It is always tough getting started on a new project but once I start its like a day in the country or at the beach or breakfast in bed.  And I stop and go back and stop and go back, looking at the work with fresh eyes. 

I even changed my name on my blog and my YouTube channel to Joan Mansson. Pastel Artist. I feel so at home; all warm and fuzzy.

It's official! I'm a Pastelist.

In my continual struggle to find my place in the world of art media, I have finally landed on my feet. Wow. Pastels. Pan Pastels. Pastel Pencils. I've said it before. I have used pastels for decades and experimented with and hunted for my "best" medium. I've given away all of my pastels, all varieties, numerous times, going back to oils and acrylics; learning watercolor; inks; colored pencils.  What a journey and I realize that most of the experimenting was self sabotage. While I could have been improving upon and creating magnificent art with pastels I kept stepping back into mediocrity. Yes. I mastered all the media; well, most of them. I was looking for easy and difficult and permanent and light and heck, I just don't know. But I do know that I am finally, after 70 years on the right track. I started drawing when I was 2. I hit a snag in grammar school, fourth grade as I recall. No need to go into it but that's where I first used pastels in the form of colored chalk. I was good. I took to it naturally but I was seduced away to colored pencils and oils and all the rest. 

I think today about where I could have been and just throw up my hands. This is where I am. This is where I start. This rooster is representative of my pastel work. I painted it yesterday. The video is on Youtube. I have hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of art supplies ready for donation and gifting. I keep doing it but this is the last time. I feel so satisfied; so right; so ready. Today is the first day of my avocation as a Pastelist. I'm already a member of PSA. Juried even. 

I have printed out photos I've taken around of birds around our house and pulled out the pencils and pad and tomorrow I begin creating a composition for my next step in pastels. I am also going larger. In small steps. From 9 x 12 to 12 x 16 and 16 x 20. A lot of the constraints lie with my work space but I can do 18 x 14 with no problem and I have lots of paper and art board in large sizes. And while I enjoy pet portraits and bird portraits, I really, really want to create compositions of animals doing "stuff". Is that period in the wrong place? Oh well. I threw out my Harbrace years ago. It's so exciting. It's so heartening. It's so WOW! 

And here are some of the other pastels I've painted over the past few years. I was so happy with each of them. Each piece was a step forward in the process. https://youtu.be/WtF4pDsF9rM

  

  

 

  

 

 ... even my logo is a pastel portrait of Renard, Mon Petit Chien Rouge

A different approach to colored pencils

 

I painted this magnificent seagull using an oil based colored pencil and odorless mineral spirits on bristol paper. This was a first. First for this brand of bristol paper, first for this colored pencil and a first for blending the mineral spirits with paper blending stumps. It worked beautifully.

Here is my work space. All of my colors and stumps selected. The pencils, a set of 48, came from Art n Fly. I ordered it from Amazon.com. 

Here's a close up of the pencils and stumps. 

I came upon this method of blending with stumps rather than brushes on an old YouTube crafting video. I was interested in seeing if anyone had used pencils and spirits for create a wash. I never found anyone but I did find a few crafters from a dozen years ago sharing the use of the stump and the oil and pencils while filing in their rubber stamp projects. It was brilliant, to the point and easy. They each drew in heavy lines of pencil within the inked lines of the stamped image and then used the paper stump to blednd the color out from the edges to the center. So cool.

I did a bit of experimenting and saw how easy it was but being a painter I needed to apply the technique to a bird or dog to see how it worked on a larger scale. I've been meaning to paint this seagull for a few years but never got around it to. I don't know if it was a download or one I took myself in California or here in Florida. If it was a download it came from Wildlifereferencephotos.com or Pixabay.com. I take a lot of photos of shorebirds here. But I digress. I drew