In a studio painting, it's much easier to add a person here, and car or a bird here and there. In plein-air painting it's harder, because they never stay still. You have to use your short term memory quite well, and put down the large shapes very quickly. This is the sea bus leaving downtown Vancouver for North Shore. I didn't think to add it in the painting until it started to move into my frame. I had a few seconds to decide where I want it, and quickly render it. I think this is also what's great about plein air painting because lots of unexpected can happen.
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| 2013 03 26 - 6.5" x 8.5" |
This is one of the earlier pastels I did, and I was still using mostly dark paper so I don't have to put a lot of darker pigments on the paper and make the lighter tones dirty, but I feel like the dark paper tone is too strong here and push through the thin layer of pastel, and give the whole painting a aged/dusty oil varnish look. It also make the colours appear less saturated. So if you use dark paper without pastels with strong covering power, it can tint your whole painting and give it a color effect.
My pastel is the Gallery 60 color set. It's a cheap set (I think about $60?). Some sticks are very hard you cannot make it stick on the paper, it just scratches it. Some sticks are softer but they are quite thin. Maybe in the future I will try other kinds of papers such as sandpaper that grips of lot more of the pastel and make it stick.
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