While I have that sentiment about many things, for this discussion, I’m talking about art. Specifically, I’m talking about all the possibilities for paintings. Which, a few months ago felt a little more constrained, or required a bit more calculation or engineering. You’re thinking, ‘what’? I know. Just hear me out.
Up until a month or two ago, I was planning on most of my art pieces being either some form of stippling or watercolor. I considered taking up painting in some other medium than watercolor but hadn’t quite committed to figuring out oils, or learning about gouache, or trying acrylics. All of those would require a fair bit of learning and maybe even dealing with the valley of suck. A place I didn’t feel I could spend too much time fighting my way out of. Last fall I happened to start a piece in pastel as an experiment. That piece turned out to be my painting A Cliff and the Southern Ocean.
The experiment was to use soft pastel as a watercolor. The pastels I use are mostly pigment with little to no filler and so they dissolve nicely with water. I worked on the piece off and on for several months and tried to enjoy the messiness of working in pastel while definitely enjoying the vibrancy of the color. At the time I still had several other pieces I was working on or had planned so I didn’t think of it as anything other than an experiment.
Then one day I read something about pastel and canvas. I don’t remember what or where it was, but it stuck in my brain. I had been using canvas board for the stippling paintings with the acrylic ink and since I was planning more of those, I had a few extra, unassigned canvas boards laying around. I also have some sanded gesso. I bought it a few years ago after working on a pastel painting for myself, but I hadn’t really used it. Since I didn’t think just a gessoed canvas board was going to be enough for the pastel to adhere to I decided to give the board a coat of the sanded gesso.
Yes, this started as a squirrel. An idea that takes hold and distracts you from what you were doing. I’d ask for help cleaning the squirrels out of my place but honestly, I’ve become accustomed to them and would miss them terribly, so I just deal with them.
For that canvas board experiment, I chose a picture of some berries. I wanted something that would be interesting but not too intricate in its detail because I was trying something else new as well. I didn’t sketch it out in minute detail before I started on it, as I usually do. I tried blocking in the main parts with the idea of filling things out with the color as I ‘painted’ with the pastel. I started it and then got very involved in finishing some other pieces. By the time I got back to it I was rethinking the stippling and had done, what at the time, I thought was just going to be a sketch in pastel. I also happened to have a long weekend off from the day job. I chose to spend the weekend finishing several pieces of art that I had sitting around. The berries where just one of the pieces. At the time I was also in a bit of a quandary as I was starting to find that the stippling was really taking a toll on my eyes and my hand.
As I worked on the berries with the rich color and the ease of covering a larger area and the mixing and even detail possibilities, I got really excited about the piece. This piece that started as an experiment. I used the picture because I thought it would be a good comparison later when I did it in watercolor. But here I was seeing it come together in pastel and just amazed and loving it. There are pieces that when I finish them and step back and look at them, I am amazed and sometimes dazed. It’s a feeling of pride, and humility because I’m a little stunned that I did that. The berries were that. And more.
I had not considered pastel as a main medium they were just a faster way than colored pencil and easier than watercolor for doing a larger piece of art in color and usually just for myself. And even at that, I keep buying more pastels. I even brought some back from Paris last year. Then, I finished the berries. I saw pastel as a possibility. I turned around and did the Silvertone Guitar in pastel, also on canvas board, instead of the acrylic ink stippling I had originally planned for it. I decided to do Fred the fish in pastel even while still working on a stippling version of it because I could see how vibrant I could get the color.
Before, when I looked at a picture that I wanted to paint from I had to consider how I wanted to do it, watercolor or stippling. If it was stippling, I had to decide color or black and white, and how was I going to show the detail or make the subject stand out from the background if I wanted a background. Now when I look at a picture that I want to work from there is less thought of how I’m going to do it and if it’s possible to do it. I still have to decide between watercolor or pastel and size as well as surface, those decisions never go away. But now I just think of how cool it would look and is that what I want to work on right now. I’ve even gone back to some photos that I really like but had put aside because I couldn’t quite figure out how to do them. Now, I look at them and see them as possible.
Sometimes it just takes finding the right tool, or medium, to open up a world of possibilities and the joy and excitement that brings. Do your remember being or watching kids in a toy store? How when they encounter all the different toys that are doors to different worlds of the imagination, you can see their eyes and brains glow. That’s what I find for myself now, with the current shift towards pastels.
To be sure there are still things I’m working on and learning. Like choosing the right fixative. I had another artist on Instagram suggest a particular brand that doesn’t distort the pastels, so I am going to try that. The search for that fixative lead me to some others that I want to try as well. I’m also still working on what support I like best for pastels. I have a stack of the Canson Mi-Teintes pastel paper so I’m using that for now as well as taking a better look at the sanded gesso on canvas board. And then there are the pastels themselves. Just as in other mediums you have variances that make one brand a favorite over another, the same in soft pastels where there is a variety of hardness and as well as pigments, color selection, shapes, quality, and if you want pastel pencils or just the sticks.
And even with that…Oh! The possibilities!Yes, in six months or a year, I could switch to some other medium that I find just as liberating. Hooray! It isn’t about finding that one thing. For me it’s about finding the thing that lets me make the art that needs to be created.