Stash Shopping 2018

12/30/2018

I have something of a tradition in that the end of every year I go through my sketch books and sketches and reminisce about what I have been up to. I put them together in a sort of photo blog. Part one. Pastels

I use pastels for basically two things (apart from just messing around). I use them to do preparatory sketches of landscapes. it helps me decide two things. Firstly if I am going to paint them at all, and secondly what detail to include, enhance, diminish or leave out.

The other thing is flower paintings. I sketch the bunch of flowers from life, with pastels, then I paint from the sketch I like rather than the original flowers or a photograph.

Next up watercolours and ink.

I use watercolour and inks to try out ideas, just to sketch things that are round about and just, you know play around with. I will also use them (as in the above) as an alternative to pastels for preliminary sketches. Which one depends on my mood. Sometimes I will do both or one of them and a pencil sketch like in the below.

Speaking of which now pencil. Pencil and paper is I find the most accessible and least messy medium. Occasionally I will use pen or charcoal pencil instead but pencil is preferred and I will draw all kinds of things.

Sleeping cats feature allot as I have a cat and the only time he is still enough to draw is when is is asleep. Some of these drawings like the toddler (who is my niece) went on to become paintings and other ones like the rocks where the inspiration for the Rock and Pots series of paintings.

One thing I am not very good at is drawing from imagination or memory. I find I need to have an image or object to work from to produce anything good. The only way I can do this is to produce abstract patterns. I also tried imagining some monsters with partial success.