Peacock Feather

Well this is vibrant and very effective. A very nice study of a peacock feather :)

Beautiful, the texture of the paper adds to the fine detail of the feather Val, very effective. Gorgeous colours.

A doodle ??? well you make pastel work look like a doddle!!! Super work Val.

This is amazing! I love the colours, the superb textures and the close up view. If this you doing a doodle then I think I am going to give up and take up knitting!!

Doodle, and in an unknown medium? Can't wait to see the results when you've read a book or two!!! Lol! Excellent!

So striking! Love the colours and detail ; you've done a great job.

Hi Val, :-) this is so very beautiful, and it looks to me that you have achieved the fine lines you thought you could not achieve with the oil pastels :-) did you use a paper stump at all? My limited use of oil pastels (which i prefer to oil paint) i found sometimes my finger (though it made the pastel blend better) did not work as well as the paper stump with a little (Zest-it) on the tip. You do not need my advise at all, just thought id share it with you anyway :-) I would not say you have created a mere doodle either. For your first attempt this is fabulous :-) and i look forward to seeing more :-)

Goodness me, I wasn't expecting such nice comments, as I said I was just playing around with them so thank you very much. Fiona I've got one book on oil pastel and found it completely useless so I'm loathe to fork out on any more:) I'm very impatient anway, I'd much rather be doing it than reading about doing it, probably where I'm going wrong LOL. Rebecca, thank you so much for your paper stump aand zest it tip, exactly the sort of tips I was hoping for.

No problem Val :-) i have also used olive oil on the paper stump instead of zest-it :-) any cooking oil you have :-p just a very very very tiny bit on the stump to help get the blending going :-) thank you do much for your lovely comments on my Kingfisher painting :-) i agree with you about the books, i have not found many to help me when it comes to painting, so i created an inspiration A6 book with wallet sized pictures from internet (copyright, royalty free) places like www.arkive.org which has lots of animal photos as i prefer to be painting/drawing rather than reading about it too :-p you can also use the scratch technique with oil pastels, that is fun to do, with the pointed end of a craft knife, or pointed scissors, but do not dig them into the paper, you are just scratching the surface, for example, you could cover the bottom of a page with green oil pastels and practise creating blades of grass with the scratch technique. I only know very basic things, i am sure others on here have a lot more knowledge :-) hope it helps.

wow and this is a doodle................wonderful

wow and this is a doodle................wonderful

Lovely work Val - never tried oil pastels, love the vibrancy.

Hi Val just your very kind comment on my best friends pastel pet portrait, thanks so much for taking a look, was interested to read in the comments on this peacock feather that you had been dabbling in oil pastels, did you ever get any really useful advice about them or did you discover yourself anything really useful about the medium, i find i am learning something every time i do a drawing with pastels