Seascape - A demo work created during Soft pastel art workshop

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary." Pablo Picasso

I conduct art workshops from time to time. It is my way of meeting art enthusiasts who share a passion for art just like me. During these art workshops I get to give live demo's of my techniques that I use to create landscapes, seascapes and other subjects as requested by the participants.

The soft pastel painting as below is a quick demo work of a seascape created during a recent two days soft pastel workshop for a participant who wanted to understand the steps involved in creating sky, some bushes, grasses and sea. So we decided to work on a morning scene at the beach, bright and breezy with white sandy seashore.

Seashore ( Demo work created during art workshop)

Soft pastel painting on Canson paper

Size 6" X 8"

My next Soft pastel workshop is coming up on 17th and 18th of September. The pastel brands that the participants get to use during the workshop are Mungyo, Gallery, Camlin and Koh-I-Noor. Camlin is pretty reasonable to start with but I normally recommend the soft pastel set of Koh-I-Noor which has 48 different bright colours. 

Unlike water colours and acrylics, colour mixing is not easy in soft pastels. Mixing more than two shades leads to muddy effect. Hence it is advisable to have different individual shades. I started with a single set of Mungyo ( 48 colours ) and then over a period of time went on to collect many different brands. While working it gets difficult to open up all the different boxes and that's the reason why I went on to create a small soft pastel palette which has all different brands mixed together. 

Soft Pastel Palette

I posted about "Organising my soft pastel palette" some time back and also wrote a post on how I go about "Cleaning my pastels" when it gathers dust on its side.

Vaddi beach in South Goa - water colour painting

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."

Pablo Picasso

I love painting seascapes be it any medium. I find it very relaxing. The time spent near the seashore hearing the sound of waves crashing at the shore and the tranquil atmosphere kind of rejuvenates the body and soul.  

This year in the month of September we visited many of the pristine beaches of South Goa. I had the opportunity to click many photographs with my new Canon 7D camera. Using these photos as reference I plan to paint some of the beautiful seascapes.

The water colour painting as below is of Vaddi beach which is situated in South Goa. We spent a lot of time at this secluded beach as it is not a prominent tourist spot and therefore it is not too crowded.

I loved this simple composition and enjoyed painting this scene but am still struggling with the greens. In the meantime I am reading a lot about colour mixing so as to get the theory into practice.

Vaddi Beach
Water colour painting on Indian hand made paper
Size 10.5"X 14"

Thanks for visiting my blog. You can browse through my works at INSTAGRAM too.

Charcoal drawing of a "Glass and Cup"

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." Pablo Picasso

I am always on a lookout for a subject for my next painting. This time I decided to do a Still Life Painting of a transparent glass and a ceramic teacup using the charcoal medium.The paper I have used for this work is FABRIANO ACADEMIA. which has a little texture and I love the effect created on this paper.

Everytime I do a charcoal painting I experiment a bit with my technique trying to get new effects, new looks and a different work.

A glass and a teacup

Charcoal painting on Fabriano Academia paper

Size 5" X 7" ( Excluding mountboard )

Thanks for browsing through my works. If you intend to attend my "Art Workshop" which I normally conduct during the weekends you can drop in a mail to me and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

My works can now be seen on my INSTAGRAM page. If you like them, please share.