Course work: Having been dissatisfied with the results of yesterday’s use of oil pastels on Canson charcoal paper, I turned to a small sheet of light yellow Strathmore charcoal paper (which has a finer texture than does the Canson paper) and carried out some more experimentation with a simple setup. The results of overfilling the texture are not satisfactory, either. It is possible that some of the inhomogeniety will be improved my working at the larger scale required by the actual exercise.
Reading:
John Elliot Oil Pastel for the Serious Beginner
Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 2002
Pp 56-141
(This book by one of the pioneers of oil-pastels has a lot of useful information, but it does pass a bit too quickly over the fundamentals which are most needed by the beginner.)
Personal Sketchbook work: Did more work on the colored pencil project workbook project started on 25 December.
Feeling I needed a change, I went back to charcoal and Strathmore charcoal paper and did a drawing of a human skull, which turned out better than anything else I’ve done recently.
Weekly reflections on learning experience: This has been a busy period of color work, including colored pencils, colored markers, and oil pastels. All seem to require specialized techniques or additional materials to produce good results, and the time I have spent on them is insufficient for me to have done anything more than experiment with them in the most superficial of manners. The marker sketch of two bananas that I did on 18 December is a better piece of work than this week’s effort with markers. Reading about techniques is no substitute for seeing them done by someone who has mastered them. Use in a multimedia fashion has often produced results superior to employment as a single medium, although such use may violate the intent of the exercise in progress.
Total time: 3 hours 34 minutes
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