Crayon Painting

NOTE: I took a week’s summer vacation away from my blog. It’s kind of nice to get away for a couple of days and build up a backlog of material.

I’ve been feeling artistic lately, so I’ve taken up my tools again.

I finally got a good book of watercolor techniques, but I think I might need to get a book on starting watercolors. I’m also going to check out the local Community Education to see if there are any classes I can take.

Erica has a collection of watercolor pencils that I might also try out. They seem like an interesting idea, especially for fine detail. Not sure how they will work in practical use, but that’s the great thing about art. Even your mistakes can still be interesting.

I started work with soft pastels again. It’s strange using what feels like a softer crayon to draw things, but I do like the look of them. There are still a few tricks of the trade that I need to work on with pastels. I’ve gotten some of the blending and layering techniques going, but certainly not perfected.

Blending is the tougher one for me. Finding material I can use to blend is the toughest part. I used a rounded metal pen to blend this morning and it produced little to no effect, much as I suspected. Using my finger is a good method, but becomes to difficult to control in small areas. Maybe I’ll try some smudge sticks and see if those do what I’m hoping.

My attempt at designing the Major Arcana in a month has failed, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up. It just means I’ll need to divert more of my attention to the project in order to finish it up. I’m kind of tempted to incorporate my work in pastels and watercolors into the project though.

Work has been good for doing quick soft pastel drawings out the cafeteria window. There are plenty of interesting shapes and architecture to try different techniques. The next time I have something that isn’t just an experiment in colors I’ll post it up here.