Soft Pastel Mark Making

No painting again today. I’m playing in an online correspondence chess tournament at the moment. I’ve won one of my eight games but the other seven are still in progress and all coming up to the boil at the same time and using up a lot of the energy and creativity that would otherwise go into painting.

But I’m going to put up a post today. I saw a great YouTube video this morning by Susan Jenkins in which she divided up a piece of paper into to twelve and showed a different type of pastel mark in each box, encouraging viewers to paint along. And I decided I’d do something very similar and laminate it to keep with my pastels. It’s not that I don’t know about these techniques, it’s that I don’t use enough of them in my work. I tend to get carried away doing side strokes and smoothing them out with my fingers. What I need is a reminder that there other types of mark I can do. And this laminated chart will remind me every time I reach for the pastels.

And, you know what else? I have a drawer full of polystyrene packing chips in my studio searching for a purpose on life. Susan’s video inspired me to try using these to blend pastels. And they work! They might even work better than fingers allowing the original colours to still be heard rather than blending them into something closer to a single colour.

That’s all for today. When I’m back to painting, I expect I’ll be starting with soft pastels. Or maybe oil pastels, with which I’m guilty of similar sins and with which I can use similar marks to this. And if anyone ever does a similar video to this but with oil pastels, I’m ready to watch and join in.

Now back to the chess.