Soft pastel painting

"In nature, light creates the colour. In painting, colour creates the light."Hans Hoffman

Pastels is a vibrant dry medium and I got into using it a few years back. I started with Camlin and Mungyo and then went on to purchase Koh-I-Noor and Gallery too. My latest brand in pastel collection is Sennelier which is very very expensive, however it is very soft and creamy and has deep rich colours. I have not used it much but plan to do so soon as the last and final layer on my paintings.

My today's post is an old work, a scene .from Mahabaleshwar which I created a some time back. Evaluating older paintings has become a norm and I always find a few mistakes here and there. So I touched up this painting with Sennelier pastels and was satisfied with the final results. 

Subjects such as these ie "Forest scenes" with winding pathways appeal to me a lot. I also get inspired by the sunlight that perforates through the foliage to lighten up the pathway at places. The light that falls on all the elements of the nature defines the form and shape and with every painting that we do we learn to see and observe.  

Light at the distance

A soft pastel painting on Canson MT paper

Size 8"X 12"

The greens in the landscape are always the biggest challenge and it continues to intimidate me. This colour along with blue is so predominant that it can be a mystery which gets tricky to solve. The only solution I find is to continue painting, have a keen observation and with time and experience it all gets better. 

I created a post on "The papers I use for my soft pastel artworks" in May, 2016 wherein I have written in detail about my experience with different papers before shortlisting the ones that I use today.  

Thank you for visiting my blog and CLICK HERE to browse through my gallery of paintings in other mediums as well. 

Soft Pastel Palette - Cleaning and organising it.

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together." Vincent Van Gogh

My soft pastel needs cleaning and organising from time to time. With time it gathers dust and some pastel colours as it rubs against the neighboring pastels. This makes It difficult to identify each individual shade.

On earlier occasions I used rice in an old jar to shuffle the dusty pastels and they would come sparkling clean. Click here to watch my earlier post of 2014.This time I decided to use Semolina or finely ground wheat, to execute this process. To my surprise it worked pretty well. So after the clean up I organised them neatly into four different trays segregating the blues, greens, browns and the rest of the colours.

Posting few images below.

The Blues and the Greens
in two small cardboard boxes.

The very light shades and warm colours put together.
And the browns and violets put separately in another flat box.

The jar of Semolina in which I drop in the

Broken pastels for a clean up.

Now my soft pastels are finally cleaned up and are set up in four different boxes in a pretty much organised manner. Previous to this arrangement I was managing with ONE TRAY and later on it shifted to THREE TRAYS of pastels. The size of the palette keeps on increasing with time. I guess it happens with all the artists. 

The different brands of pastels that I have put together are MUNGYO, GALLERY, CAMLIN and KOH-I-NOOR TOISON DOR. By placing them together in a palette it is so much more convenient at my work place rather than opening up all the different boxes individually. This arrangement is working good for me, however I have plans to add a few more brands of pastels later in my collection.

What brands of pastels do you use for your artworks? Do share your views by writing down your comments. You can also view my works now on INSTAGRAM where I have started posting on a regular basis.

Thanks for browsing and all your support.

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.