Monday, July 19, 2010

Return to Pastel, Poppy the Cat

Years ago I mainly used pastel for my art with an occasional foray into graphite. Then I discovered coloured pencil, followed swiftly by acrylic and watercolour and ended up using mixed media for most of my work.
Every so often I have tried pastels again but been frustrated by the lack of detail I could achieve when compared to coloured pencil and acrylic.
However I wanted to do a picture complete with background for my last submission for the Society of Feline Artists exhibition and decided to give pastel a try. The reason being I can work faster in pastel than anything else and for the background I had in mind the ability to blend was ideal.
This time I used the Fisher pastel paper and was delighted with how much detail it was possible to achieve.
Hopefully the background will go as smoothly as the head.

6 comments:

Jess said...

Gorgeous! I have been using pastels lately for my animals as well. Would you mind sharing what brand/type of pastels you use? And how do you get the fine lines for the fur? I always have trouble getting those individual furs, they all tend to blend together. Thanks!

Gayle Mason said...

Thanks Jess

I'm mainly using hard pastels to put down all the base layers. So far a mix of Carbothello pastel pencils and Nupastels.
To get the fine lines I sharpen my pastels using a knife, but I'm also finding that it is much easier to get dewtail on the Fisher paper than on other brands I've used in the past.

Vicki Holdwick said...

Gayle,

This is absolutely lovely! Can't wait to see more. I'd love to see more "on the way to the finished product" pix.

xoxo

Reena said...

Interesting to hear your opinion. I've actually ordered some Fisher-paper just a few days ago. Hope to get it soon to try it out.

How do you think it is compared to velour paper? So far, of the papers I've tried I prefer the velour since it allows me to get more details in pastel.I really hope that Fisher is even better.

creatively dreaming said...

It is looking lovely so far. I cantwait to see some more x

Dean Grey said...

Lovely green eyes!

-Dean