Lately in our Drawing 2 class, we have been working with soft pastels. This field of drawing is completely new to me. I have never before worked with these pastels. I quickly found out that they like to smear everywhere! They were so messy! Eventually, thankfully, I got the hang of using my fingers and the side of my hand to smear and smudge the color where I wanted it
to be present. Although these pastels are a nightmare to get precise lines and texture on your paper, they do give a unique color and blending variety to your piece. They very easily blend with other pastel colors to form new shades and tones within your drawing. The piece I recreated was an abstract image of water droplets on some leaves. To give the piece an interesting look, I added blues and purples to some of the leaves, even though we all know leaves are not blue or purple. The blending of greens and turquoises within the leaves creates a much deeper affect to them. Using all these different colors on the different leaves gives the piece a nice movement to it, causing the eye of a viewer to scan the whole piece, as appose to one section. Shadowing with pastels is a tricky task. To obtain the darker greens and blues I needed, it was necessary to blend the black with greens and blues. This blending gave a shadowed look to the overlapping leaves. With the bright colors on the leaves, a dark background put a nice emphasis on them. Also within the background are blurred spots of color to give the effect of objects behind the plant. The background is not just black, it also consists of a dark blue blended together with the black. The blue enhances the darker back and draws the eye. The focal point of the piece is the water droplets falling from the leaves. To get the effect of a transparent drop of water, you had to look at the water not as water, but as separate sections of color and lines. At the time, it may have seemed odd, but in the end the effect of a transparency was there. The different colors within the droplets draw the eye directly to them. They are different than anything else in the piece, causing a curiosity to what they are. Pastels may be difficult to work with, but they create a look different from many things. They blend very well and give many unique shades to your piece. They give great movement to the piece that is appealing to the viewers eye.
0 Comments
|
AuthorWritten by art students of North High School in Evansville, Indiana Archives
December 2013
Categories |