I have pretty much finished work on the Anita portrait now, as I want to start something new. One thing I have found with pastels is that mixing is limited; you can mix on the paper by smudging which is a bit haphazard. So for this reason very large ranges of colours are produced to allow you to choose the colour you want. I have a range of 24 and I have found that to be far too small, especially in the dark colours. I found myself using black quite a lot in Anita's portrait because there just wasn't another colour dark enough. I have a dark blue which is the next darkest and up from that is a dark brown which is quite a bit lighter.

The other problem is that working on a small scale is tricky because of the bulky-ness of the pastel sticks. Sometimes I want a fine point to draw a line say for around the fine lines of the face. Trying to locate the corner of a thick stick of pastel is haphazard and I don't get enough control over where it is going on the paper.

I am going to read up about these issues for solutions, but I am thinking I may start oil painting soon.

Anita Portrait

I am going to leave this one now and start something else.
The scale of the drawing is such that the detail in hands and face are a bit difficult with the bulky pastels. You have to sort of guess where the line is going to appear and sometimes mistakes are made. I could sharpen the pastel into a pencil-like point but it seems an awful waste of pastel!
Anyway, there are still some issues with the general drawing which I have to sort out.

Portrait in progress

Here is a portrait of Anita in progress. It is a pastel on grey coloured Canson paper. Size 24' x 19'. I have yet to put in the cusions she is sitting on that are on the table, then she won't look like she is floating.

Hands and Feet Studies

Here are a few studies of hands and feet. They are all my hands and feet that's why the hands are all left hands as my right hand is drawing. I want to do some studies of two hands together sometime and will have to ask someone else other than myself to model.

These are all graphite pencil on paper.
Either A2 or A3.

Bottles finished

That's it for the bottles. The paper I used here is wrapping paper, probably better used for multiple sketches as it doesn't have enough texture, called 'tooth' to hold the pastel. I am not entirely happy with it but I am going to start on something else now.

Weather changing

Here it is changing from one to the other. (see below)
Rangitoto island in the distance is in sunshine while we are probably about to have a torrent of rain.

Weather

This was the scene on New Years Eve. The weather here is alternating between this sort of stormy, rainy stuff to hot bright sunshine. If I can find a photo of the sunshine then I'll post it, but for the meantime you'll have to trust me.

Work in Progress

Another pastel drawing in progress. I've had a bit of trouble with this one and have changed the background a couple of times.
It is drawn on brown parcel paper (not the best quality but very cheap) and it doesn't have quite enough texture to the surface.

Jars

This one was drawn with a Rotring technical pen . It is my old pen which is about 30 years old. I used a nib size of 0.3 which is pretty thin, and I found that the ink flow struggled on this paper. Probably a smooth card would be better. The paper used here is fairly smooth but does have a fine texture to it.

Self Portrait 4

After further work mainly on the background and shirt, I may leave this now as it is.

The paper is Canson - dark green. The pastels are a small range (only 12) of Mungyo.

Size: 24" x 19"

Testing

Here is a test to the blog by email.

Self Portrait 4

Further progress on the pastel drawing, 2nd photo.

Here is a drawing in progress using pastels on coloured paper. I wanted a luminescent quality of the light pastels coming out of the dark paper so I chose dark green paper to contrast with the orange and yellows of the pastels.

Chinese Horse 2

This horse is drawn with technical pen and black ink on A3 cartridge paper.

Chinese Horse

This drawing of a bronze Chinese horse is in Charcoal pencil on cartridge paper - size A3

Tom on Xbox

Here is a drawing of Tom playing on his Xbox on Boxing day. It is unfinished.
It is on cartridge paper size A3
graphite pencil 3B, 6B

Self Portrait 2

Anita

Here is a quick sketch of Anita. It is A5 size.
I will be starting a pastel drawing of her when we have time.

Helen playing with Joe

Here is Helen with Joe. Helen is studying English and has been staying with us for about 2 months. She just left yesterday and Joe will soon be missing her as he loved playing with her. She will be missed by us all too. She was wonderful with Joe, and great fun to have around. Here we had a day at Anawhata beach on the black sands of the west coast. The last half hour of road to reach the beach is unsealed and then there is another half hour walk down a steep hill.

Joe getting ready for Christmas

Self Portrait

This drawing was made by first rubbing graphite powder onto the whole paper to make a ground base of mid grey.
Than the highlights are made by rubbing out the base and finally darks are added in with pencil.