Diabolical Eyes

 

"Diabolical Eyes"

About 6x2 inches

Pastel on PastelMat

I'm supposed to be preparing for this upcoming art festival but, as usual, I got distracted when I saw a little scrap of PastelMat lying on my work table.  Thought this closeup of a cat's eyes was suitable for the upcoming Halloween holiday.

Now, somebody get the whip out and make me get back to work!

A Colored Pencil Painting!

If you've known me any length of time at all, you know that the colored pencil medium is not one of my favorite mediums to work in.  Don't get me wrong, it is one of my favorite mediums to look at and long to do well, but the mastery of it hovers slightly out of my reach.  I think it has more to do with getting bored with a painting before it's finished than anything else.  I also think the average non-artist would be amazed at the length of time a really good colored pencil piece takes to do really well.  And that's the rub for me - I just don't seem to have the required patience and stamina to do a colored pencil work as well as it should be done.  Take this cat, for instance.  I started it way back in September, I think.  It's only 5 x 7 inches and is on Ampersand's PastelBord so a background wasn't necessary to paint.  There is a bit of detail in the face with several color changes but, really, it shouldn't have taken this long to finish!  And, no, I wasn't working steadily on it the whole time.  Frankly, I'd gotten bored rather quickly and had put it away soon after starting it and only worked sporadically on it since.

So, I found it when I was trying to straighten up my studio and decided to finish it.  It's not at all perfect as I didn't have the colors I really needed to "optically mix" the colors I wanted.  But, I did finish it and am proud of that fact!

Maybe one day I'll decide that I really want to pursue colored pencil but for right now, I'm content just to have finished this one!

Into the Light

"Into the Light"

Pastel on Pastelbord
copyright
Jan Gibson

This was done for a challenge at Let's Make Art and it was a challenge for me. It was a challenge because I haven't painted that many cats and this is another painting on Pastelbord by Ampersand which is a fairly new support for me. It was also a challenge because of the cat's face emerging out of the dark and into the light. I wasn't sure that I could get that effect right.

But, I'm fairly pleased with this painting. I'm not so pleased with the darkening of the pastel when I spray it with fixative. You may remember the little bunny that I did. I sprayed it with a common, rather cheap fixative and it also turned very dark.

This time I used the expensive Lascaux fixative because I'd heard that it didn't change the color of the art. I followed the advice of many artists who have said to use very light layers of spray and not to saturate the painting with the fixative. Unfortunately, even with that advice, the pastel still darkened quite a bit and also left my dark background very flat looking.

The pastel pencils I use are water soluble and I'm beginning to think that any moisture whatsoever is going to melt the pastel enough to darken it. This would render glassless framing pretty much out of the question unless I can find some pastel pencils that won't melt with moisture.


So, this little kitty will get framed the old-fashioned way and I'll continue the search for a way to frame pastel without glass!