Exploring Coloured Media

My past experiences with painting has been mainly water colour so coloured pencils, pastels, inks and markers are relatively new to me, so I have decided to tackle these exercises differently.  I find that doing exercises in boxes too restrictive for me as I need to experiment and really try out the coloured media and also try them out on different papers.  So my first real change is using an A3 sketch book instead of A4 which allows me feel more space to fill and I think this has given me more scope for ideas.

I firstly experimented with soft pastel and I worked with pastel pencils, pastels sticks and a very soft pastel which was almost like powder.  I tried all three on pastel paper and tried different ways of blending i.e. with finger, torchon, cotton bud, kitchen roll and a rubberised blender.

  I also discovered that pastel is water soluble and you can add water and move it around with a brush. I found that the soft pastels you could apply with kitchen roll or a cotton wool pad which I think would work for soft skies.  I found that the light colours need to be laid down first as it was hard to get a light tone on top of dark colours  when blended although you could add a white highlight directly on top of dark colour and leave it unblended. The next paper I tried was colour fix which has a rough sandpaper texture and I found that you had to put on the layers quite thickly and work it into the tooth well.  I didn't like this paper but it holds the pastel in place and supposedly doesn't need fixing.  The third paper I tried is Pastelmat which I have used before it is a smoother paper with a very fine tooth and out of the three I found this one the best for all the types of pastel I have.  The other paper I haven't tried is velour and this is supposed to give the picture a very soft look.

http://pastelnews.com/2010/02/28/old-pastel-master-maurice-quentin-de-la-tour/

One of the great Pastel Masters a Frenchman Maurice Quentin de la Tour worked primarily in pastels in the rococo style (style related to the court of Louis XV ornamental and lavish).  Among his most famous painting was a picture of the Marquise de Pompadour who was mistress to the king.  In 1737 he exhibited 150 portraits mostly pastel paintings and became portraitist to the King.  The painting of Marquise de Pompadour is a stunning picture with luxurious fabric brilliantly highlighted to give it texture.  The whole picture is stunning and incredible to think it was done with pastels.      

                   Picture of the Marquise de Pompadour downloaded from   

                                 http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/Search.aspx

The next mdeium I tried was water colour pencils, I experimented with them on cartridge and water colour paper, aquarell not cold pressed and artistico fabriano.  All three papers worked but I think that the cartridge paper was better with dry pencil work and the water colour paper you could do both wet and dry.  What I discovered with water colour pencils is that if you made a heavy line and applied water the line still remains and doesn't blend in which is useful for veins on a leaf, lines on onion skins and perhaps foliage and blades of grass.  I tried blending with a propen marker which gave a deeper tone and also with a pencil blender which softened the colour.  Cross hatching works well and you can build it up on layers.  I then decided to try the medium with using wet and dry techniques and it works well together.

I also tried using the pencils with water soluble pens and this also was a good effect.

The next medium I used was coloured inks and pen.  This is a very new medium for me and I enjoyed seeing what I could do with them.  For stipling and making dots they are excellant and I tried cross hatching and again a good effect.  Using the colour as a wash was interesting as there was slight colour mixing but once it dried you can put on another wash in a different colour and the under wash doesn't move.  I tried some of the marks Van Gogh used in the Olive Trees and it was fun.

Oil pastels were surprising, initially I had a few very cheap oil pastels and I couldn't blend them so I bought some artist quality pastels and the difference was immediate.  They blended very well and it was like painting with lipstick!  The colours are so vibrant and it stands out on the paper beautifully.  The problem I had with them is trying to do detailed work, it was very difficult.  It was great for scratching into and you could put another colour on a  base coat and the colour showed through when scratched.

I also had a go at trying to use the pastels in a picture and what I liked about them that you can blend in different colours to achieve tone which adds more depth and the interest.

Coloured fine liners produced a flatter more uniform mark, you could vary the line by pressing lightly but it doesn't change as much as pen and ink.  I tried stipling and using different coloured dots together and this gave a good texture it also made me think how much work went to the paintings of George Seruat and Paul Signac who used this technique with paint to produce very textured paintings with a modernist feel about them.

Below is a picture by Paul Signac  called Antibes, The Pink Cloud, down loaded from the Bridgeman Education Library.