Trusting Your Art Instincts

As the result of a post at a Let's Make Art forum thread, I attempted a one hour painting of an avocado. Since I'd never completed a pastel painting with the CarbOthello pastel pencils that I bought recently, I decided to make it a true challenge using both a fairly new medium and having a rather stringent (for me) time limit. The painting is on the smoother side of a yellowish MiTientes pastel paper.


I've had a problem with obtaining the right colors with the pastel pencils and dithering about trying to decide what color is closest or best has been a real frustration for me as well as being a real time waster. There's not really any color mixing with the pastel pencils and they don't always have the colors you need in even the largest sets! This exercise taught me to trust my instincts as, with the time limit, I had to grab a color I thought would work and just go for it. While the colors in the scan above aren't quite those of the original, they're fairly close.

One of the LMA members is married to a chef and she said he knew it was an avocado at least!