Home assignment:

Soft Pastels: Discovering the Painterly Side of Drawing

Handout

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Soft pastel color mixing handout

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Instructions

Week 5:

Bring all of your drawings that you have created in the course. You'll have the entire class dedicated to refining the pieces you feel aren't done yet.

Send me images of all of your drawings from the course - I am putting together an exhibition of all of your artworks. This will also help me give feedback to you since the pictures will be high quality compared to Zoom.

Week 4:

In preparation for week 5, you'll need four sheets of paper. You can either use 4 full sized sheets of pastel paper OR cut two pastel sheets in half to become 6x9".

Each sheet will be a different color: bright green, dark green, yellow, and light, bright blue (like the clear blue sky).

Week 3:

Finish your layering drawing. Pay attention to tone (light or darks), saturation (bright or dull), and temperature (warm or cool).

Before next week (week 4):

  1. Color your paper with a green color pastel.
  2. Smooth out the pastel and make it solid by painting with a brush and water. You don't need to completely cover the paper with pastel before adding water.
  3. Let it dry completely before class.
  4. If you want to make the color deeper or more saturated, repeat this process.

When you add water to paper, it will curl. You'll want to tape all around the borders of your paper to a sturdy support board.

This artwork will be our inspiration for next week. Odilon Redon started on a green paper and so will we. Try to match this green as closely as you can.
Week 2:

Continue blending your drawing. The goal is to get rid of any pastel lines and hard transitions between shadows so that you achieve a soft gradient. It takes time. Be patient. You'll be rewarded!

Week 1:
Here's my finished demo

Complete your color chart before next week's class.

The last row is about tonal transitions to create a 3D sphere:

  1. Dry blending: Starting with a solid color and blending black to create a shadow and blending white to create illumination
  2. Optical color mixing: I started with dots of blue all over the circle then used light blue, light green, and white to create the illuminated side, and purple, black, and dark blue to create the shadow.
  3. Adding water: I started with brick red, then added black to the shadow (dry) then added white to the light area (dry) then used water to mix it together. I added some more dry pastel into the wet to control tone. I also used a dry brush to move around pigment because my wet brush kept picking pigment up. Try using a dry brush on a damp background!
  4. Layering: I started with stripes of orange, then added stripes of yellow and white to the illuminated area, and stripes of blue and dark green to the shadow. I came back in with stripes with orange as well.

Artist Examples

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Group Photos

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