Hi again! Life has been pretty busy and its been tricky squeezing in painting time but I’m back in action again now!
Last weekend was brilliant – I went to the SAA ‘Its All About Art’ live event in Bristol, which was fantastic! Along side a vast array of art materials, books, dvd’s and every possible arty gadget you can imagine for sale, there were lots of professional artists demonstrating all sorts of different media and offering workshops to those of us wanting to try something new. With the majority of my own paintings being birds painted in acrylic, I decided to reach out of my comfort zone and headed for pastel and watercolour. My 1st port of call was to Vic Bearcroft, who’s workshops I attended at last years event. Vic is an award winning artist – his pastel paintings simply blow me away! Even though I’ve seen him paint, it still amazes me how he can create such fine, soft detail of animal fur using soft pastels. Having said that, Vic is also very good at sharing his art with a straight forward, easy to follow step by step workshop, where he clearly explains how he creates his paintings building up layers of pastel from a sketched outline, tonal sketch, blocking in, then final detail with contrast & highlight. I took some photos of the various stages as I worked on his picture of a ginger cat.
Stage 1 – outline
Stage 2 – Tonal sketch
Stage 3 – Shading ears
Stage 4 – Shade eyes and white areas
Stage 5 – completed with contrast, highlights and detail
The afternoon session saw Vic Bearcroft demonstrating the same technique, with the subject being his Husky Dog which gave us the challenge of representing black and white fur. I was concentrating so hard during the workshop I forgot to take photographs of the stages, but I remembered at the end, and even got a snap of the great man himself with his demonstration piece!
Vic Bearcroft demonstrating a Husky in pastel.
My finished version of Vic’s husky dog in pastel.
Vic Bearcroft with his demonstration pastel painting of a Husky
During the two-day event, I managed to take part in no less than 8 workshops… four with vic! (I very much needed the practice!) Other workshops I took were a watercolour landscape workshop with Mathew Palmer, two pastel landscape workshops with Jeremy Ford and a life drawing session with Malcolm Cudmore, so this weekend more than made up for my lack of painting over the last few weeks!!
Here are the other paintings I did – Watercolour with Mathew Palmer and the 2 pastels with Jeremy Ford.
Windmill Sunset, watercolour, Mandi Baykaa-Murray – Matthew Palmer SAA Workshop.
Northern Lights in pastel by Mandi Baykaa-Murray. Jeremy Ford SAA Workshop
Pastel landscape from Jeremy Ford SAA workshop
I’m already looking forward to next year’s event…I’ll post it in my blog when I find out the dates – it is well worth a visit!
Happy Painting,
I heard from Ann how much you all enjoyed the Event. I wish I could have been there. How can pastels be “out of your comfort zone” when you have done such excellent work?
Hi Pam,
yes, we had a wonderful weekend thank you!
Pastels are very different to the acrylic paints I normally use!! Its a whole new technique learning how to apply them. They are dusty and your fingers get filthy and although the velour paper is beautiful…you have to be really careful and try not to get finger prints everywhere!! I’m glad you like what I’ve done…I’m pleased too, its just I have to concentrate really hard and think about every move I make – not quite as relaxing as painting with paint!!!! I’m sure with practice it will get easier…so I am practising like mad. I’m pretty sure Mum picked you up a leaflet with some ‘how tos’ in showing how its done, so you can have a try as well. I hope you enjoy having a go,
chat soon,
love Mandi xx