This was my first art work with new box of soft pastels from Koh-I-Noor and some Holbeins on Fabriano Tiziano paper. Just as expected, I love Koh-I-Noor, very good quality pastels, pleasure to work with. Since my college times I didn't do any florals, so it was something new to try and to enjoy... Love it. Want some more colors too.
Painting is signed, matted and ready to be framed ( 7.5 X 9.5" painting, 11 X 14 mat).
I did those two just to try some new (for me, of course) supports and pastels. They both done from very same reference picture, but first one in Dry Pastels and the second one - in Oil Pastels.
For first painting I used Colourfix paper, some charcoal, Nuvel Carre pastles from Sakura (48 colors), few Nupastels and small set of 24 Holbeins. Also some pastel pencils where used (Conte, Dervent, Carbotello), mostly it was blue Conte for some corrections with sky color, because I don't have in my Pastels any blues what I would like to use for this purpose. Light blue Conte is just us good us it gets.
The second painting done on similar support with using of Holbein and Neopastel Oil Pastels and finished with Sennelier. To make sky look better I had to use some wash.
I also changed tree on the right and made it into a pine tree, just to have a different object for practice.
I had much more colors used for this painting then for one above, since my collection of good OPs is much better at present moment then what I have in my Dry pastels.
I really can not tell which one I like less or more, they both turned out very different, and it is, probably the best part about it.
Originally I choused this picture for my OPs painting. I finally got 40 colors set of Holbein and some ColourFix paper to go with it and plained to use it for this work. At the very last moment for some reason I changed opinion and instead of using my precious OPs, brough our brand new set of Carre pastels from Sakura and decided to give it a try... It is my first work in Pastels, if we will not count my teen years, when I had a small set of "Yarka" and my other tools were - own finger, some send paper for Dad's garage and heir spray! Well, ColorFix is much better then send-paper from garage, as for Sakura pastels on this type of support they did a good job. I wouldn't be so sure about using of it on regular pastel paper... not soft enough. And once again - the same old wish: I wish I would have more colors!
Yesterday I tried something new ( particularly for myself). I decided to do underpainting of gouache for myOPs. I used Caran D'ache Gouache 8 colors set for underpaiting of Grand Canyon and then pained with OPs over it.
I wasn't impressed when I tryed to put next layer of Sennleirs over my painting. It just wouldn't go down, how I wanted to see and feel it. So I stuck with Neoplastels 24 colors set from Caran D'Ache and just a few extra Senneliers (Orange and colorless blender). I finished my study of Grand Canyon with most accent given to the tree on a front of painting and paid very little attention to mountains on background, just trying to keep up with their color.
More likely I'll be back to the same theme few weeks later, after I'll finish two other painting I'm working with right now. Generally I would say that combination of Gouache with Neopastel was very successful, while my try to combine it with Senneiler wasn't up to my expectations. Senneliers did a good job over Neopastels, but not with underpainting itself.
And finally it is done! Took me a while. But it is all right. Now I can concentrait on portrait of my filly and wait till my Holbein's will come sometime next week... Can not wait to try them out!
