Speaking of Art Blog

Pomegranate Galaxy, pastel, 11x14"

Here is my latest pastel painting, of my hand holding a John Ryszka created glass marble that somehow harnesses the wonder of a whole galaxy inside it.  I bought this marble last fall from John’s glass collection at his gallery in Michigan City IN, Rising Phoenix Gallery, https://risingphxgallery.com/.   The whole concept of holding a galaxy in my hands and turning it to see it under different lighting is a mind bending experience for me.  How unique and other worldly to be able to manipulate such a gorgeous object!

I decided to attempt to capture some of its beautiful colored light in a pastel painting, but first I needed to research galaxies.  What elements are unique and distinguishing to pictures of galaxies? But the more important second question was, how can I transfer those qualities onto a flat surface and make them believable, 3-dimensional?

The first thing I noticed as I looked on the internet at pics of galaxies is that there are dots and dashes of light, but the shapes are not randomly placed.  There are curved patterns.  I can tell that John knows that when he creates his galaxy marbles because I could see the swirling patterns in the marble I own.  But they’re not big curved continuous long lines like tentacles on an octopus.  No, they are dots and dashes that are placed such that they form slightly disjointed implied curves.  The dots and dashes are not set up like little toy soldiers perfectly placed in neat rows either.  They are more scattered patterns, with outliers here and there.  But even the outliers don’t stray too far from the fold.  So that’s what I kept in mind as I started to create some star patterns on my pomegranate colored base – scattered curved patterns of dots and dashes.

Second, I noticed that depth in galaxy images is achieved by the stars having greater and lesser chroma.  So what is chroma?  It’s color intensity.  Intensely brilliant colors jump forward while dull colors recede.  I could definitely see that in my marble too.  Some colored glass dots jump out at me while some look distant because they are way less brilliant in chroma.  For rendering that, I had an idea.  I started by choosing colors I wanted to use in only my collection of hard pastels (think Nupastel, Polychromos, and Holbein) and my pastel pencils.  Both hard pastels and pastel pencils are softer and duller in chroma than really soft pastels.  Here’s a little chart I’ve created to show the colors I used for the stars and the differences in chroma between the hard pastels (and pencils), and the soft pastels. 

I decided to use that detail to my advantage.  First I applied lots of dots and dashes on my pomegranate ground color using only hard pastels and pastel pencils.  I kept them pretty dull, not showy, on purpose.  Then I started in with some super soft pastels (Ludwig, Schmincke, Unison, Great American, Sennelier).  I applied those dots and dashes on top of my hard pastel layer, and I wasn’t afraid to really push hard on the pastel sticks at times.  Perfect!  Suddenly there was depth.  Some stars looked like they were very far back in space while other jumped forward and sat right on top.

Did I follow the dots and dashes exactly as I saw them in the marble?  Yes and no. I copied the main galaxy pattern that you see at the top of the marble, but with the rest of the stars I could improvise.  Once I figured out how to create a galaxy, then I could have fun and play with those elements.  Besides, every time I even moved my marble the slightest little bit in my hand, a whole new array of stars appeared before my eyes because of how the light hit the colored glass dots.  So I decided to use my newfound knowledge of how to create a galaxy and then I simply ran with it.  Where did I run to?  Straight up into the heavens.  I reached for the stars.