Artistic Left Eye

It seems the best way to learn how to use oil pastels is to watch videos on YouTube. Ā Today I watched Scrooge The Profit describing the rule of three, which is that any area of colour in a pastel painting should have at least three colours mixed together. Ā This is the sort of thing that Fisher should have been telling us in his book rather than talking about melting pastels in frying pans. Ā And then I watched BlackBean CMS drawing a couple of eyes. Ā Two great videos that are well worth seeking out if you’re a new pasteller.

After watching those videos I had to have a go at drawing my own eyes. Ā I started with my left eye. Ā As this eye is connected to the right side of the brain, this is my artistic eye, yes?
Anyway, I drew the eye down lightly and roughly in pastel, then added some darks in sap green. Ā After that, I just kept adding more colour on top of what was already there, thinking all the time about what colours needed adding where to improve the painting (something I learned from the BlackBean CMS video.
Once I was happy with all the pastel, I finished it off by scraping textural lines out with a scalpel (revealing colours that were underneath – wow!) and smearing things out with a finger in places, generally around the edges rather than in the eye, which I wanted to be focused.
And the end product is amazing. Ā It actually looks like an oil painting with textures, impressionistic colours and all. Ā Obviously there’s lots of green there but that’s because I have the landscape colour selection.
This isn’t going up for sale – it’s a self portrait and nobody wants one of my eyes staring at them from the wall.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *