Exploring Pastel class#2

For our second pastel class at Artist & Display we took a long sheet of paper, drew a line down the middle to divide it in 2 parts and painted a bowl. On one side we did warm colors and on the other side cool colors. Then we painted a frosted vase with 2 flowers in it. Not much discussion this week, just practice.

Bought a spirol pad of 12x18" Strathmore Charcoal paper in assorted tints to practice. My other paper, Canson mi-teintes in assorted colors is only 9x12". I feel like I want to paint larger. Ordered a medium gray view finder to help me see light, medium and dark values in color better. I'm glad I understand the painter's color wheel. Other people in my class are still struggling with it. I'm still working on identifying light, dark and medium values along with warm/cool colors in pastel. (Every color has a warm and cool version) I don't know if I like having all the pastel jumbled together in a box like we have them in class, but I've noticed that that's how most pastel artists tend to work.

Used Aquabee Fashion Design Bold Bogus Rough Sketch paper with vine charcoal and white for portrait sketching at Milwaukee Sketch Club. Worked very well. Missed helping out at Pius studio night- worked too late.

Exploring Pastel class#1 by Pamela Scesniak at Artist and Display Supply Inc

Attended my first class. All materials are provided. Very nice teacher. We did 4 exercises today.

1. Made a simple picture with hard and soft pastels. Drew a child picture of house and tree with hard pastel. Used fingers to smudge away house, then redrew house differently. Then used soft pastel to broadly put 2 colors on tree and one on house. Then put lights on sun side and darks on shadows and shadow side.
2. Hue family. Picked 3 versions of 1 color (hue), a light, medium and dark. She demonstrated that black overlaid a color nullifies (dulls) it to turn it into a shade-tone and white nullifies it (washes it out) to turn it into a tint-tone. Then we made bands horizontally across the paper using the light, medium and dark version. To demonstrate that each color has a warm and cool version we took yellow in a broad vertical band to warm the colors and blue to cool the colors. She noted we should look for warm and cool versions of the same hue.
   
3. Complementary colors. Color wheel, primary colors (red, yellow & blue), secondary colors (orange, green and purple) and complementary colors discussed. She mentioned that complements vibrate when placed side by side, warm colors come forward and cool colors recede. We took a medium gray tone and drew 2 circles about the same size in squares next to each other. Used 2 complementary colors to draw each circle then filled in the background with its complement to demonstrate theory.
   
4. Vase drawing. Sketched on paper with hard pastel close to paper's brownish color. (We used Aquabee's fashion design 897 bold bogus rough sketch paper.) Drew a vertical help line then some squashed circles which were connected to rough in the vase. Then took a light, medium and dark value of the vases hue and colored it in. She suggested starting with the lightest color. Drew a line to represent the table edge and filled in the background with the complementary color.

Before the next class I'd like to make a sheet of each hue of my pastel colors arranged by value, warm and cool tones.