There’s no theme here, but I wanted to get in the last few things I did at the tail end of 2020. Two of my previous pastel frogs are promised to family members and I wanted to have one to keep for myself. The still life is the latest in what’s turning into a series of light shining through glass bottles. For a while in the middle I regretted my decision to paint green light shining on green apples, but I think it turned out in the end.
It’s been a while, but now with everyone under a stay at home order, I’ve got plenty of time to play with art. Here are two quick studies I did to try to see how they work. I’m learning. The frog had good colors but I realized I’d made it much too small for the kind of details I wanted to use.
I called these “pastels” but they are specifically Stabilo CarbOthello pastel pencils. I have an ancient set of pastels that I never liked because they make a huge mess and were ‘scratchy’, I’m not sure about the scratchy part, but having pulled them out again now I think my main problem is that I only had 9 colors and it wasn’t enough to do anything. And also I would need to work BIG and that kind of size intimidates me. Buying paper that large is expensive – but I’m adult now with my own budget.
