Most of the classes teaching pastel painting have taught layering as a rite of some sort of holiness. Light pressure, do, do it slowly, mix it, do not be in a hurry. I went along with all of that. Paid for it too. And still somehow my work had seemed. dull. Overworked. I was very fine at dusting, and not painting. Continue here to see our newest updates!
After some time, it became annoying in a silent manner. Not dramatic. That in itself, that single snarl of thought that I was doing everything right and was not getting results.
Another expensive course did not result in the change. It was due to the fact that I did something that I was not supposed to do: worked harder, sooner.
That’s it. That’s the technique.
I started to make earlier promises and not go under the first layers. Making the more daring strokes at the outset. There was no violence, though in vain. Something queer about him, Pastel–you must not be too nice with him at first or he never wakes up.
The surface is significant in this case. It is even capable of gaining more pigment in the first place even when you are on sanded paper. In most of the courses, this is hardly highlighted. They have taken you into this snatched safety and they keep on putting another coating of paint on it, till the tooth is killed and the whole job is muddy anyway.
That was the case as soon as I reversed that tactic.
There was no need of ten passes to enhance the richness of colors. Shapes felt clearer. I no longer combined everything into a mush of nothingness. And, to be honest enough, I did not need to spend a lot of time fixing the mistakes as the number of them was minimized.
A psychological change also takes place. It will no longer be necessary to worry about each mark when you make up your mind. Your hand has more faith in you. It is a little voice that changes the formation of the whole picture.
I recall one composition–a mere landscape. I would have started with a slight groundwork, and filled in the sky. It was plain, mid-tone blue, not too high or too low pressure and with sweeps across it that I had arrived that day with.
It was mistaken by a margin of about thirty seconds.
Then I put in contrast. A blacker streak on the horizon. It clanked together with a jerk. No endless blending. No overthinking.
It is that element of pastel painting classes, which most of them do not prepare you at, the awkward phase, when everything is not right, until it is fixed. They attempt to iron that out, yet that tension is quite a good thing. It provokes you to retaliate instead of retiring.
What is one more thing that I no longer do? Mixing it all up with my fingers.
Seriously. That practice in itself was killing my work. It makes texture soft and combines colors in a manner that is not harmful but turns out to be dead. And now where I gladly perplex, not a bit. Let the strokes be left in sight. Give the paper time to do some of the work.
No, I do not lose the lessons I had in those classes. Just… differently. The building helps, however, the transformation was made with the help of breaking the rules at the right moment.
Funny how that is.
Perhaps it is not your materials, or your skills that can have you get stuck. Maybe you are holding back too prematurely in the process.