Category Archives: Art Works in Progress
Q: What is your favorite thing about creating on sandpaper? (Cassandra Alvarado Oliphant via Instagram)
Ready to start
A: Undoubtedly, I could not make my work without UART sandpaper since my entire pastel technique evolved around it. I use 400 and 500 grit. My favorite thing about it is its ‘tooth’ (i.e. texture or roughness).
Over the many months I spend creating a painting, I build layer upon layer of soft pastel. Because this paper is relatively “toothy,” it accepts all of the pastel the painting needs. And as many people know, I own and use thousands of soft pastels!
Many layers of soft pastel and several months of studio time go into creating each painting. My self-invented technique is analogous to the glazing techniques used by the Old Masters, who slowly built up layers of thin oil paint to achieve a high degree of finish. Colors were not only mixed physically, but optically.
Similarly, I gradually build up layers of soft pastel, as many as thirty, to create a pastel painting. After applying a color, I blend it with my fingers and push it into the sandpaper’s tooth. It mixes with the color beneath to create a new color, continually adding richness, saturation, and intensity to the piece. By the time a pastel painting is finished, the colors are bold, vibrant, and exciting.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I’m slowly working on a small, 20” x 26,” pastel painting. The tentative title is “Majordomo,” although I’m searching for something better.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: “Avenger,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38” awaits finishing touches.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* 381
Barbara’s studio with work in progress
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
A work of art, if it is art, is not an end but a beginning. It is a challenge to the artist who produced it and to the artists around him to take the next step, to answer the questions raised by the work, to achieve what he or she has yet to accomplish. It also represents a challenge to the non-artist, who is offered a fresh vision.
Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: “Schemer,” Soft Pastel on Sandpaper, 26” x 20” is nearly finished. Among other things, I will do more blending to soften the transitions from light to dark in the fabric.
Comments are welcome!
Start/Finish of “Sentinels,” Soft Pastel on Sandpaper, 38” x 58”
Start
Finished, signed lower left
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Preliminary sketch
A: This is a preliminary charcoal sketch for my next large (58” x 38”) pastel painting. I loved seeing “The Champ,” 26” x 20,” blown-up as a poster in the London Underground so I decided to create a larger original. Now I can’t wait to tackle all that hair! So far the sketch resembles a Rastafarian, but who knows if that will carry over to the pastel painting! Stay tuned.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
“Sentinels,” Soft Pastel on Sandpaper, 38” x 58”
A: At last, I have put finishing touches on “Sentinels,” 38” x 58,” and signed it! The photographer will photograph it and then, on my next trip south, this painting goes to the framer in Virginia.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I’m at the beginning on a small (26” x 20”) pastel painting. The subject is a jaguar mask I photographed in La Paz. This is painting number eleven in the “Bolivianos” series. Lots of green colored dust now!
Comments are welcome!
Start/Finish of “Poseur,” Soft Pastel on Sandpaper, 58” x 38”
Start
Finished, signed lower left
Comments are welcome!
barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 