Speaking of Art Blog

The Shy One, pastel, 11x14"

This is my latest pastel.  It was a challenge.  It stretched me, not because the subject matter was difficult, but because I needed to utilize 4 special pastel painting techniques all in one piece of artwork.  I thought I’d illustrate all 4 techniques in one blog post so that the differences can be clearly seen.

First is SCUMBLING.  I use this technique quite a bit for the background on my pastel paintings.  I can cover a lot of surface in very short order with this technique.  It entails setting a soft pastel stick down on its side and smearing the stick on the paper, which leaves a bunch of pastel on the paper that is the length of the stick.  Depending on how hard I press the stick, I can leave a faint smudge, a little bit more solid smudge, or a really solidly heavy smudge.  This is handy when I want to start with a heavy layer and then switch to another color and apply a light scumbled layer on top of that, resulting in some of the under layer showing through.  For the zebra painting, I used a Ludwig eggplant pastel (V100) to scumble heavily in the background.

Next, I want to talk about BLENDING.  That’s the gradual changing of a color from dark to light with no abrupt cutoff from one shade to the next.  To prepare for using this technique I did a test strip of some chosen colors along the edge of my surface outside the painting’s parameters.  Once I set down the colors next to each other, then I finger blended in between them to cover my tracks.  I was satisfied with those colors, so then I used those chosen sticks to render the black stripes on the zebra’s back.  BTW, this particular technique is fun because you can get messy with blending.  BUT, too much blending results in mud.  You have to show restraint with your finger blending and only do it where the colors transition from one shade to the next.

Then there’s STIPPLING.  This one is akin to pointillism, tapping tiny little dots of color on top of a base pastel color.  This is best done with a super soft pastel.  I would find an edge of the stick and tap tap tap it down randomly in a small area.  I used more than one color for the stippling too.  But again, restraint is necessary.  Too much stippling and it looks like your surface has a nasty rash.  Stippling is a really cool way to render diffused light on a subject, like on an animal’s hide.

Lastly, there’s GLAZING.  This technique is where you put a very light coat of a color on top of another color to change it, but in a light subtle way.  Think changing the tint.  I used this technique for changing the white stripes in only certain segments to a slightly more colorful shade of off-white, to denote shadow.  With this technique I started by putting down a base coat of white using a hard pastel, then I lightly stroked some blue and red-violet on top of the white using 2 pastel pencils.  Glazing involves putting down very light strokes again and again on top of another color while stepping back every so often to see the effect it’s having from a bit of a distance.  But if you start with a super soft pastel for your base coat, then adding a light coat on top of that becomes too difficult.  It’s hard to add more butter to a coat of butter.  Better to start with a leaner (harder stick) pastel base coat.  Then stroking another lean coat on top (with a pastel pencil or another hard pastel) works really well.

Detail from reference photo

So how did I know when and where to use each of these techniques?  I saw it in my reference photo.  If you start with a really detailed photo, you’ll see it.  Same, of course, applies to working on site.  You’ll see it.  But it sure is handy to know how to go about accomplishing each technique when you see a certain element in front of you.  I hope you find this 4-pronged lesson to be helpful, for zebra stripes, a colorful sky, or even skin tones.  Happy creating.

The Shy One, pastel, 11x14"

This is my latest pastel painting, The Shy One.  I took my reference photo of this super shy zebra at our local small zoo last summer.  It would not turn and look directly at the visitors walking near its little yard and barn.  Instead, it faced in the opposite direction, stood in the darkened doorway of its barn, and glanced over its shoulder at us periodically.  I decided to take some pics of it anyway.  I found its striped patterns to be mesmerizing and so beautiful.  Had I ever looked really closely at the stripes on a zebra?  I don’t think so.  What I quickly realized was that each stripe is unique, and many of them are NOT straight nor possessing any kind of uniform width.  How delightful!  The stripes remind me of petals on a flower, with each one having a personality all its own.  Some are squiggly, some are broken, and some aren’t even stripes at all; they’re odd shapes, like a teardrop or a circle or the interconnected branches on a tree.  Fascinating.

What attracted me to doing this painting was not only the almost black and white color palette, but also the design.  That central black line up the zebra’s back leads you on a strong diagonal right up to its head.  There’s linear perspective going on here.  That’s where overlapping shapes get smaller as they recede back in space.  The zebra’s backbone serves as the line that goes back while the stripes that converge along the black spine get smaller and thinner.  The curving spine helps to create foreshortening.  That’s what you call the seemingly too-short length between the top of the zebra’s rump and its neck.  Looking at this zebra from the side would reveal that that length is actually quite long, but it gets shortened substantially with a foreshortened perspective of the animal.  And if the artist doesn’t make that middle black stripe become increasingly narrower as it goes back in space toward the neck, the sleight of hand would be gone and the magic would disappear.

When I change this painting to black and white, it still looks like a zebra, which indicates that color is of lesser importance than shape.  Why is this significant?  It means that I was able to fudge on the colors, as with my introduction of deep maroon and wine coloring of the black stripes on its rump.  It also means that I needed to be spot on with each stripe’s shape, size, and placement.  We artists devote a great deal of time to getting the values and colors just right, sometimes to the neglect of our shapes.  This proves that sometimes shape is way more important than color.

With a zebra, shapes matter, A LOT.  I think I did this zebra proud - circles, teardrops, shyness and all.