"He started it" 091124

091124, première mise en ligne par J F Le Saint.

When starting to work on a new pastel I have no single method. I may start with a sketch of outlines in Sepia. or I may apply colours directly and work with shapes both of the actual subject and of negative space. I might instead place light on a dark background and work from there, or start any other way.
Then comes a choice between two extremes that could be called caution and boldness. Each approach has its drawbacks. Be too cautious and the result feels contrived. On the other hand be too careless and you get proportions all wrong. The problem being that you don't realize it right away : the eye gets used to errors and only by looking at your drawing in a mirror do you see your mistake...
Often there is no conscious decision on how to proceed, the subject makes it self evident. In this case I had to work in loose strokes. It has its advantage, namely, I didn't have to worry too much about when to stop : It soons become difficult to work on details when the surface is saturated with layers of pastel quickly applied one on top of the other. It would still be possible to add detail using one trick or another, but I think it would ruin the "rough" look of the pastel as a whole.

sold

Pastel on Pastelmat, 30x45cm