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Combining Chalk and Oil pastels
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Message
Posted
Hi Bill. I'm so sorry I haven't been back onto this thread for a couple of weeks. You asked for recommendations about coloured paper.
I always use coloured paper for pastel landscapes in much the same way as I prime my canvases for oil painting. Canson MiTientes is my favourite because it is fairly thick, and designed for pastel work. I buy a 30 x 40 cm pad which comes with 4 colours. Greys usually work well for landscape, although I like experimenting. Sandy colours work well for a summer painting, and black can really make colours pop.
I've attached a couple of examples of my soft pastel work for you, which were both completed outdoors en plein air. The first one of Harry Kelly's Cottage at Cregneash in the Isle of Man is worked over dark brown Canson MiTientes paper, which I've allowed to show through in a few places. I outlined the buildings first with a light coloured pastel pencil and then used my older, harder half stick pastels plus pastel pencils for some of the finer detail. The second one at Kyre Park is on grey Canson MiTientes paper using my new Jackson's hand made soft pastels. Once again I used pastel pencils to draw in the initial outlines. The Jacksons pastels sink into the tooth on the paper better and create a smoother finish. I used my fingers to blend the pastels for the water in the foreground.
Posted
Hi Bobbie. I've hardly been on the website for weeks, so I didn't see this reply until tonight. Thank you for your recommendations. I think I'll try coloured paper soon, as I'm increasingly realising that pastels is my best medium (having said that, I've just bought more acrylic parts, as I'm going to start an art group as a volunteer at a local charity and I want to show them my acrylic modification of the 'Bob Ross' technique for doing a painting in a half hour). Black sounds like a good background for making colours stand out, which I often have difficulty achieving.
I like your pastels! In the first, you've given real definition to the cottages using white in that way. The coloured paper enhances the effect too, I would guess. I think the second one is my favourite. The smoothing effect is very well done, giving a real watery effect. I have no qualms about using my fingers either. Whatever works!
Posted
Bill - don't follow Bob Ross: I beg and implore, because you could lead so many desperately astray.
Bob was a half-an-hour painter; that's the time he had to fill his TV schedule. That dictated his approach, his choice of (GOD-AWFUL!) paint, and his mentor, Wilhelm (Bill) Alexander: who was an old rogue and a mountebank, but an infinitely better painter.
Yes, his approach would work better in acrylic than it ever did in oil, but - Bob couldn't draw; he had no sense of perspective; just - just don't.
We don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents - OH yes you did, and oh no you didn't.
Sorry, he just presses all my buttons: he was a dreadfully bad painter, and inculcated bad habits in generations. The one good thing about adopting his method in acrylic is that you can paint over and obliterate it. I am rarely this proscriptive or prescriptive, but - he couldn't paint. Soothing voice; people listen to his broadcasts to calm themselves; he was a lovely, kind, and gentle man; but for goodness' sake, never encourage any student to go with a sea-mile of him.
Right, now -breeeeeaaaaathe..... A coloured paper is great for acrylic, pastel, watercolour to some extent, but I would counsel against black - it's known that oil paint becomes more transparent over time, and if painted on a black canvas (as Bob also did) will darken; this is not necessarily true of acrylic or pastel, but - and granted, we could be thinking of 200 hundred years into the future here - it wouldn't surprise me if the same were true of any paint, though perhaps over a much longer timescale.
This may not matter to us; to our children (I have none - who is to look after me in the fullness of time, eh?), or to our grandchildren. And yet - 300 years is nothing in the age of a painting; so, vanity personified to think that one of mine might last that long, I'd avoid a black base.
Posted
Sorry Robert. I didn't see this one until just now. I haven't been on the site much. I've just written on another thread about Bob Ross, but I'll answer this one.
The art class doesn't look like it's going to happen. I'm volunteering with a local charity, who run a 'men's group. But the guys, mostly vulnerable ex-homeless types, aren't interested in doing much except playing dominoes (surely the most boring game ever invented). There is one exception though - he showed me photos of his paintings and he's probably better than me, but he's rarely there anyway. So the art world is spared a few more Bob Ross clones, as you would see it!
We all have our pet hates (one of mine is Elton John - the sight of him on TV drives me nuts), so I understand your antipathy towards whispering Bob. His paintings are too formulaic even for me and I dont like the commercialisation. I'll always have a soft spot for him though. I don't have great aspirations as an artist - I'm just an occasional leisure painter - and a little Bob Ross suits me fine. I even like a little Thomas Kinkade, although I doubt he'll ever be a featured artist on the site either.
Bill
Bill
Posted
Oh you must all be so BORED with this by now! But I'm hard to bore (could it be that bores usually are? Dismiss that thought..)
Bob Ross was a great human being - I've never had any doubt about that. He had no vanity; he knew what he could do, he was modest about what he couldn't do. And his last years were just cruel. Kincade on the other hand - was not a great human being. He was more technically proficient, though his paintings were beyond words (yes, even mine) dreadful. Dreadful not because they were just bad - as Bob's were - but because they were cynical: he told lies in paint. Bob at least tried to tell the truth about the world he saw. Kincade didn't - the only stars in his eyes were shaped like dollar signs.
We could have a reasonable discussion about, eg, Jack Vettriano; or Nancy Kominsky - in the one case, the work divides opinion; in the other, this was television land in the 70s and 80s - a lot of entertainment; a bit of information. But I don't see how it's possible to discuss Bob and Kincade in any artistic context - a humanitarian one, yes (so far as Bob's concerned); a televisual phenomenon, also so far as Bob's concerned. Unless you're interested in discussing the impact of alcoholism on an already damaged character, I don't find much to talk about with Kincade: how do you analyse sleaze, and why would you want to?
BUT - now, count your blessings - I'm going to shut up about it all now.
For a while.
Posted
If I’m not mistaken, that Thomas Kinkade abomination you have shown us Bill is called ‘Bridge of Hope’ or some god awful title very similar! I won’t be showcasing him, or Bob Ross either… any volunteers out there?I think you may be right. There's a wonderful/nauseating (depending on your mindset) video of traditional Christmas carols on Youtube, with accompanying Thomas Kinkade paintings. I'll maybe post it nearer Christmas. It reminds me of those made-for-TV Christmas films they've already started showing, with the same five actors in them all, so bland they could put you in a coma. But this has nice music.
Edited
by Bill Downie
Posted
Bill - my little treasure - don't think you HAVE to post it; stomachs are sensitive things, and I'd rather mine were not provoked into upheaval just before Christmas....
I've seen the Christmas carol you mention before: recovery took a while. You - a good Christian man, by all accounts - surely wouldn't wish to inflict that on me again? You are surely not first cousin to the Grinch?
Posted
Oh you must all be so BORED with this by now! But I'm hard to bore (could it be that bores usually are? Dismiss that thought..) Bob Ross was a great human being - I've never had any doubt about that. He had no vanity; he knew what he could do, he was modest about what he couldn't do. And his last years were just cruel. Kincade on the other hand - was not a great human being. He was more technically proficient, though his paintings were beyond words (yes, even mine) dreadful. Dreadful not because they were just bad - as Bob's were - but because they were cynical: he told lies in paint. Bob at least tried to tell the truth about the world he saw. Kincade didn't - the only stars in his eyes were shaped like dollar signs. We could have a reasonable discussion about, eg, Jack Vettriano; or Nancy Kominsky - in the one case, the work divides opinion; in the other, this was television land in the 70s and 80s - a lot of entertainment; a bit of information. But I don't see how it's possible to discuss Bob and Kincade in any artistic context - a humanitarian one, yes (so far as Bob's concerned); a televisual phenomenon, also so far as Bob's concerned. Unless you're interested in discussing the impact of alcoholism on an already damaged character, I don't find much to talk about with Kincade: how do you analyse sleaze, and why would you want to? BUT - now, count your blessings - I'm going to shut up about it all now. For a while.I knew Kinkade was a drunkard and a dubious character, but boy could he paint! Yes, he painted twee, romanticised scenes for money and fame, which in a sense were lies. But aren't most artists guilty of such superficiality at least to some degree? If we see a straight tree branch we might make it a little crooked for interest. Or if a rock or cloud formation are displeasing, do we not reshape or remove it? If the subject of our portrait has an unsightly skin tag, do we not make it a little smaller or fainter? I'm not sure absolute integrity to the subject is possible in fact. We all tell a fib or two in our artworks. So what we see in Tom and Bob might be seen as a distorting mirror (:-)), a magnification of our own desire to create something more aesthetically pleasing than it really is. A crooked finger pointing at our own lack of artistic integrity. (Well, mine anyway). Are they not the end point of this disastrous trend? In sacrificing artistic integrity for money, I think they've done the rest of us a favour. "Beware! This is how bad it can get" they seem to whisper (well Bob anyway). They are guardians at the gate of Eden, wielding fiery palate knives to keep us from stumbling out of the thorny wilderness of artistic realism, into the manicured, twee perfection of their chocolate box worlds.
