Week 15: KM, Monika & Silke

 Week 15 final submissions

In spite of the difficulty of the prompt, you all made a great effort and did some good work. Our final three submissions are from KM, Monika & Silke.

Monika

Monika really embraced the challenge, watched you tube videos and drew several works from large pages of works, from charcoal to pencil, from A4 to A5 size. The first work shown here she says she feels is still unfinished and was created using Staedler graphite pencils in HB, 2B, and 4B with a 'tortilla' (I think she means tortillion/paper stump 😁) and eraser. This is done in her visual diary which accounts for the grainy texture of the pencil work - a smoother paper would have given less grain.

Monika has observed the light direction well, creating highlights on the tops of clouds showing how the light is coming from the right. Good darks under the clouds enhance this. A good study of some fluffy cummulus clouds whith their distinctive fluffly white tops and flatter bottoms.

'Clouds' by Monika

Monika has also submitted her final cloud drawing using the same mediums as above. This drawing is perhaps a bit more interpretive and less literal than the above attempt. As a result although it may not be as realistic as the above, it has a more dynamic and passionate feel. Still recognisable as cumulus clouds this work has a lot of character. 

It is good to see the variety and progression in Monika's work as she experiments and tries different ways to render the subject. These prompts are not about getting things 'right' or creating masterpieces, but about exploring, seeing, learning, trying new things and most of all, drawing. Well done Monika. 

'Clouds over the Mountain' by Monika

KM

Another artist trying new things is KM. She is just discovering the fun of drawing with soft pastels. She has chosen a dynamic composition of an old Santa Fe church framed against a deep blue sky. KM has used a combination of browns, blues, white and grey soft pastels. She hasn't told me what type of paper she has used - and the paper type can affect how much pastel can be layered. A toothy or sanded paper with more grip will hold more pastel and allow for more layering.

As a novice to pastels KM's drawing is a good beginning - with good use of perspective and colour sense works. Some brighter highlights could assist to lift the work more. One issue she says she had is trying to blend the pastels together. In my experience it takes practice to blend pastels well. I use a soft brush or cloth if I try to blend, but usually I rely on layering the colours adjacent and over each other to build up the hues.  Also, with pastels the more colours you have the better. Most pastel artists do not try blending to create colours, but reley on a palette with a vast selection of hues. One pastel artist I know has a table 3 x 2 meters that is covered with his hundreds of different pastels! You don't need that many KM, but if you want to work more in pastels start collecting - I have around 100 or so different colours and I still don't think that is enough! You don't buy them all at once, but when you next want to draw a pastel work study what the image needs and see what you have available in your palette. You may want to go out and just purchase one or two new colours, this will slowly build up your choices to hand. 

This work shows a lot of promise and I hope you keep exploring the fun of pastels!

Pastel artist Karen Margulis posts a good video HERE on painting skies. This award winning artist has some great tips on pastel skies - especially her special blue box of sky!

'Santa Fe Church' by KM

Silke

Finding an inspiration for aether was difficult, Silke tells me. She started with wax and ink to create a work showing the northern lights, but says that though the results were interesting it wasn't what she was looking for. Mind you, I would still like to see that work, Silke! 

After that attempt Silke looked at various Japanese artworks as she enjoys the way this style of art handles landscapes and skies. I too really love Japanese woodblock prints and silk paintings, so these three mini-studies she has created in pen with Japanese watercolour are a delight.

This stylistic approace concentrates on the essentials only, using line and color or tone to express the forms. Silke has channeled her inner Hokusai in these three studies creating a lovely finish to week 15 prompt, Aether.

'Three studies of sky' by Silke

*Submissions for Week 15 is now closed - thank you all for taking this journey.*