A new experience

This afternoon, I went to an art class!!!  Not in water colours this time -  That was too delicate for me – but in pastels!   Hazel, who does the beautiful pet portraits, is doing a five week course at her shop and gallery in Melrose, Thursday afternoons for a couple of hours!

There were seven of us, most of whom had done no pastel work at all, and we began by playing with the pastel sticks and seeing how they work on different types of papers, including sandpaper!!  Hazel had unloaded some fresh fruit and veg on to the table, and got us to have a go at drawing them, basically looking at where the highlights were!   First we only used a white pastel on black paper, then we used colour, building up layers and blending colours together. Now, I will show you my pics, but I must tell you they look much better in the photos  than in the originals!    Oh I know they’re not great, but they’re my first attempts and I’m quite proud of them!

This is the green apple, the first attempt at colour on the black sugar paper background!

Now I really thought I was going to find this easy, but it’s nothing like it!  The next attempt was a cherry on sandpaper!  Hmmmmm!  I can’t remember which one I did first, but I think it was the one on the right, that turned out more like a plum!  The left one doesn’t look too bad.  Then I tried the yellow pepper.  It wasn’t finished but probably is as good as it’s going to get at the stage I left it.

Next we went on to draw on another type of paper that  is made for pastel drawing.  I think I kind of got the hang of things with the banana, though it has a strange bulge near the stalk!!!  That was on the light paper.  The

 

 

 

 

next one was on a coloured paper - my red and green apple  masterpiece!  (Not!)

It was a fun couple of hours and interesting to see how the others worked – some good artists there!  I loved the apple my neighbour drew, and told her I’d be happy to hang it on my wall any day, but she wasn’t convinced it was any good!  I think Hazel said we’d work on shapes next week, but maybe I’ll have another go at the fruits with highlights before then!

Just before I finish off, this was the western sky on my way back to Peebles around 5.45 p.m. 

Red sky at night…. well they generally say that’s a good sign for the next day, but I don’t think so!  In my experience the following day is usually wet.  I’ll let you know.

 

Talk again soon.