Pastel, baby pastel

As you can probably guess, this one is about pastels. I don’t think I’ve written about pastels before and, to be honest, I’m pretty scared of using them. But I’ve been trying them out more and wanted to share a couple of pieces with you.

First things first. I think the title deserves a little explanation and, if you didn’t already think I was a bit crazy, you will now. You see, I’m going to take you on a bit of a journey. It all started with a book my partner was reading a few weeks ago. It’s by an author whose surname is Lovecraft. At first, this meant very little to me. Then, out of nowhere, without any warning, I suddenly burst out with ‘Lovecraft, baby Lovecraft!’ to the tune of that well known track Love Shack. 

Then, when I was thinking through what I was going to write about this week, ‘Pastel, baby pastel’ just kept repeating itself again and again and again in my head. It doesn’t fit the song. It doesn’t make sense. But it happened. And what’s been said can’t be unsaid. So there you go – another corruption of a well-loved song was born!

Now, back to the pastels themselves. I have to say, I had no idea you could do so much with pastels and I’m still very much a beginner. When I first started getting back into artwork earlier in the year, I found to my surprise that I had two sets of soft pastels which I must’ve had when I was a kid. I really don’t like wasting things so, despite their age, I thought I should probably give them a whirl.

Soft pastels are pretty messy. And I quickly found out that better quality ones leave clearer marks on the paper but are also much more crumbly. And ‘more crumbly’ equals bad times for my furniture. I’ve already managed to stain a dining chair, for example, and have also blown pastel dust all over my laptop and phone repeatedly and I’ve never managed to clean it all up. I wear my pizza cat apron to protect my clothes (if you have no idea what this is, it made an appearance in my last post) but I still manage to get it EV-ERY-WHERE.

From my limited experience, pastel landscapes have avoided the bin the most and have therefore had the best outcomes. I’ve particularly enjoyed using pastels to recreate beach sunsets – soft pastels are great to use for these because the colours are really easy to blend (even if it’s a messy job!)

The pastel painting above is just something I made up and the one below is based on a photograph of Harlech beach. I mainly focused on the colours and shapes in these pieces, which I think is what you’re supposed to do with pastels. Drawing detail is hard though and I need to try and practice this. I’ve seen artists do amazingly detailed pastel portraits of animals and people and I have absolutely no idea how they do it! 

And, on this very gloomy October day, I hope that these pastel sunsets remind you of a sunnier, warmer September – that’s what’s getting me through the day!!!